On 2013-08-15 17:33:48 +0100, David Hill said:

On 15/08/2013 15:14, Sacha wrote:
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?!


They showed them the other week being grown in poly tunnels

I can see Ray's face now! ;-)
--

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