On 2013-08-14 23:11:23 +0100, Bob Hobden said:

"sacha" wrote ...

Martin said:

snip

After all the articles about how bad things are for farmers because of
climate change, there's a farmer in East Yorkshire expecting to get
his record crop of barley in the Guinness Book of Records as a world
record. Not sure what this has to do with the subject.

And I read today that the cherry crop is terrific. There's a dwarf form
planted in a Kent orchard yielding a terrific crop. The form is
'Gisela'.

Gisela 5 is the most dwarfing rootstock for cherries, all our four are
on that rootstock. Strangely Brogdale didn't want us to have the tree
we ordered from them on that rootstock, they said it was too dwarfing
for the garden and best for container grown trees and I had to persuade
them by saying I can't do ladders. All ours are doing very well, I've
had to prune them quite hard this year to keep them within their cage
and we got a reasonable crop (the second year for 2 and third year for
2). Blackfly on the new growth was a serious problem this year.

The orchard I read about growing these watch the ripening like hawks
and move cages over the trees at the appropriate time, so the cages
must be quite a size, I'd think. I don't really understand that about
it being too dwarfing for the garden. Do they mean it spreads more than
it rises, if you see what I mean?!
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk