Hi all, I have ordered some trees to be delivered this autumn. The other half
said we have far too many apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, fig, chestnut, walnut and hazel already, so she wanted something different, O.K., I decided on mulberry, medlar and the sorbus x pyrus hybrid shipova pear.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else grown a Shipova, and what are your experiences of this tree.

"Tim Perry" wrote

Hi all, I have ordered some trees to be delivered this autumn. The
other half
said we have far too many apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, fig,
chestnut, walnut and hazel already, so she wanted something different,
O.K., I decided on mulberry, medlar and the sorbus x pyrus hybrid
shipova pear.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else grown a Shipova, and what are
your experiences of this tree.


What no little Mirabelles? (make amazing jam)
No Greengage either. (much nicer to eat than plums)

--
Regards
Bob Hobden

"Bob Hobden" wrote in message
...

"Tim Perry" wrote

Hi all, I have ordered some trees to be delivered this autumn. The
other half
said we have far too many apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, fig,
chestnut, walnut and hazel already, so she wanted something different,
O.K., I decided on mulberry, medlar and the sorbus x pyrus hybrid
shipova pear.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else grown a Shipova, and what are
your experiences of this tree.


What no little Mirabelles? (make amazing jam)
No Greengage either. (much nicer to eat than plums)

And he'll have to wait a long time for mulberries ...

Mary

Yes, Mary, you are right about having to wait a long time for the Mulberries to come into full crop.
Bob, you are also right about the gages, although I chose Oullins Golden Gage as a preference.
As you might have guessed, I just enjoy growing trees, and have planted hundreds since I bought this farm.

I am also growing from seed;-

Pawpaw, Asimina triloba.
Loquats, Eriobotrya japonica.
Pitanga, otherwise known as Surniam Cherry.

I am also considering Persimmons, american not oriental, Asian Pear and
Pecans.

From this you will see that time is not a consideration, when I die my son will take over, and then his son in turn.
In farming you tend to work like there's no tomorrow, plan like you'll live forever.

Not as long as you have to wait for walnuts. I bought about a 3rd year mulberry tree, and within about 4 years I was getting enough to do a bit with them, even make a couple of little pots of jam. The main problem is picking the fruit, they tend to be inside the leaf canopy, high up, and you have to compete with wasps.

You are clearly in a fairly warm corner of the country if you think you can get something off a loquat tree. I was in Sardinia earlier this year and a lot of their loquat trees had lost their fruit to the weather this year.

Have you considered feijoas?

You'll have no trouble with asian pear, I've got one of those and when it decides to fruit they are delicious (lost the pear crop to a late frost this year), albeit small.

Cornus kousa is one of the most delicious things in my garden, and you can grow that in the ornamental area of your garden.

I read this about pecan: "It is not really a practical proposition for the backyards of temperate food gardeners, unless you are a plant experimenter with a very big lot and who likes to try to push the boundaries." They are certainly hardy enough, but seem to be cultivated in places like Georgia and Texas which have long hot summers, so I wonder whether you'll get worthwhile fruit off a very large spreading tree.

What about saskatoons/juneberries? They are delicious. Need a moist soil for them to do well. The ones which are improved for their flowering potential are not always good for eating though. I have an Amelanchier alnifolia which is improved for ornamental reasons, and the berries are disappointing.

I read this about pitanga. "The Surinam cherry is adapted to tropical and subtropical regions. In the Philippines, it thrives from sea-level to 3,300 ft (1,000 m); in Guatemala, up to 6,000 ft (1,800 m). Young plants are damaged by temperatures below 28º F (-2.22º C), but well-established plants have suffered only superficial injury at 22º F (-5.56º C). The plant revels in full sun." "The first Surinam cherry was introduced into coastal Israel in 1922 and aroused considerable interest because it produced fruit in May when other fruits are scarce, and it requires so little care; but over 10 years of observation, the yields recorded were disappointingly small." So maybe you can keep it alive in a mild part of the country if you protect it when young, but you aren't going to get much fruit off it.

If you really are in a supermild corner of the country, you could probably grow avocado. I think some people have got them to fruit in S Devon.

As a quince grower, I've always been intrigued by pseudocydonia sinensis, which is said to be edible raw.

Hi, Yes I know that I am taking a big gamble with many of these, but we are just 'having a go' to try and get greater variety.

The mulberry is pot grown, a cultivar called Capsrum, and is supposed to fruit in 2-3 years, we shall see how true that turns out to be. As it is advised to plant 2 varieties, my second choice is Illinois Everbearing.

Norfolk is not so mild. I recall seeing a Loquat in fruit in my grandmother's garden in Epsom, Surrey.

Had not thought of Feijoas, will have to look into that, and the same goes for Cornus Kousa, but I'm afraid the Avacado pear cannot manage outside the greenhouse.

I chose the Pecan var Carison, a true northern variety from Canada. Size is not a problem, but it does tend to crop bi-annually I'm told.

Saskatoons sound interesting, particularly the var Thiessen grown commercially in Canada.

My Pitangas are in pots outside. At the moment they seem to be O.K., but not growing as fast as they are supposed to. Seeded in late spring, they are now about 1 ft tall.

All my apples are from cuttings scrounged from friends and grafted onto wild crab stocks. Same thing with the pears, only they are on hawthorn stocks. Peaches grown from stone, and some have been grafted to carry my
plum trees. Cherries are grafted on suckers I found around a flowering Almond. Figs, Walnuts, Chestnuts, Hazels are all on their own roots.

Yes, I do like a bit of a challenge !! How can you discover you limits if you don't push the boundaries ?

"Tim Perry" wrote in message
...

Yes, Mary, you are right about having to wait a long time for the
Mulberries to come into full crop.
Bob, you are also right about the gages, although I chose Oullins
Golden Gage as a preference.
As you might have guessed, I just enjoy growing trees, and have planted
hundreds since I bought this farm.

I am also growing from seed;-

Pawpaw, Asimina triloba.
Loquats, Eriobotrya japonica.
Pitanga, otherwise known as Surniam Cherry.


I have a loquat tree in my garden, it produced one (1) fruit last year after
18 years of planting from a seed brought from Portugal, but life is
difficult here in U.K., fruit-wise. We cut the little fruit in half and we
each had a half :-)

I also have about six Surinam cherry trees (Eugenia uniflora) here in N.
Wilts, which I grew from seed. I don't think I can sustain them since I
only have a small greenhouse and they're getting bigger, so I am hoping to
find a botanic garden that will take them on, maybe Ventnor.

Also I have several nice small Dovyalis caffra trees grown from seed, they
produce lovely fruit if you have the right climate.

someone

Hello again, as you have had some experience with the Cornus genus, I was hoping that you could tell me how the Japanese Dogwood, Cornus kousa
compares with the Cornelian cherry, Cornus mas in terms of hardiness, how easy to grow, fruit size and weight of crop produced per plant, and also the flavour of course.

I will also try Quinces, when I can find a suitable donor of scions to graft on
whatever suitable happens to be handy at the time.

Hi someone, thanks for the info, seems from the general consensus that my
Surniam cherries will have a hard time, Oh well, win some, lose some.

But you did say your Loquat had a fruit, did it have many flowers, I do not expect much from it, but given some flowers I can collect the pollen, which is what I am after for something else I want to try.

I've had Cornus mas variegata and Cornus kousa chinensis about the same length of time, I think 6 or 7 years. I don't have the moist soil they prefer, so they have both been very slow for me. The kousa has fruit about an inch, spherical, very showy (this tree really is an all-rounder ornamentally - I really can't think of a better one). The skin is thin but leathery and you can't eat it, but you easily break through to suck out the squishy flesh: you have to spit out a few pips a little larger than grape pips. The flesh is squishy pulp, custard-like, but very sweet and delicious. My tree (still only about 2m) fruited the first time last year, and was quite heavily covered in them, about this time of year I think. But it didn't flower at all this year.

Cornus mas fruit are much smaller, about half an inch long, oval, slightly flattened, with a large hard olive-like stone to which the flesh is well attached. I find they are often very acid, and I don't bother with them very often. Maybe you can get cultivars which are selected for the fruit. The number of fruit is probably similar to kousa, but they are very much smaller. I doubt I'd get half a pint of the tree, but it is still small. The tree is about the same height as the kousa but has not bushed out as much. I've found its flowering time is very variable, it has flowered anything from Jan to April depending upon the winter weather.

I also tried to grow C canadensis, but it died - it needs damper conditions than I can easily give it. My C sibirica also decided to suddenly die this year, I don't know why. It was never any where as near as vigorous as the C alba next to it.

It sounds like your mulberries are Morus rubra rather than M nigra, but (unlike M alba) they are supposed to be just as good to eat. You are correct that M rubra is dioecious, but M nigra is self-fertile. M rubra is not often grown in Britain. It naturally grows in New England, so I imagine it is very hardy.

I agree with growing unusual things when normal things are so cheap in the shops. I've wanted to try Asimina triloba, but it seems very tricky to get hold of the plants, they have to be put in final position very young, and they need cross-pollination, so it all sounded too much like hard work and too much space in my smallish garden for fruit that probably wouldn't ripen in a normal summer here. I had a feijoa but I planted it in 2003 and it expired from drought/heat when we went on holiday at the height of the heatwave. I have a new location against a new south-facing wall I'm thinking of putting another one in, but they are supposed to need cross pollination for fruit.

Thanks very much, that's just the kind of info I needed. I've taken the liberty of saving your reply to my data files so that I can refer back to it. Clearly I need to grow Cornus kousa, and will put that on my shopping list.

I do think the Mulberry Capsrum is a cultivar of Morus rubra, but the other,
Illinois Everbearing is a nigra x rubra hybrid. I bought some Morus nigra seed from Thompson & Morgan about 25 years ago. They produced fine trees, very upright, and now over 35 feet tall, but not one flower or fruit, so
I was not surprised by Mary's comment.

I grew my Pawpaws from seed, started in a propagator, but yes they do have to get planted out fairly soon, because they have a very deep tap root.

My very mixed 'orchard' has a sandy soil, hence the hawthorn rootstocks for the pears, the south facing land slopes steeply, dropping over 60 ft to the water meadow and the river. It is grassed underfoot, which I try to keep cut, but never shorter than 1-2 inches, and regularly patrolled by a flock of guinea fowl hunting for insects. In all there is about 12 acres of 'garden', as
separate from the farm.

There are some plants which flower much sooner if grafted from, or grown from a cutting of, an already flowering plant. So maybe that is why mulberries you get from nurseries are so expensive - they are vegetatively propagated from a mature plant. Mine had one or two flowers the first year I planted it, almost as tall as me it cost me about £40. I'm trying to stop it getting too big or I'll never be able to get the fruit. Mine's a very upright form too, I've pruned it to a lollipop standard shape. I've tried striking some cuttings off mine, but without success.

Likewise, my Metrosideros umbellata (Southern rata, hardy form of the New Zealand Christmas Tree) has flowered after just 7 years as a low lollipop-shaped bush rather than the 25 years it takes from seed, because it was grown from a cutting from a mature plant. Wonderful plant, very rare in cultivation here. It looks like some ancient gnarled stunted plant, whereas in fact it isn't. People just don't realise it is fairly hardy. Wish I could get my damn wisteria to flower - it had one flower, its first, last year so I thought it would do the biz this year, but it didn't, despite all my thoughtful pruning.

Yeh, you are certainly right there. I grafted pear scions onto 3 year seedling
hawthorns, and they bloomed the next year. I picked off all the fruit when it was still quite small, did not want to put too much strain on the fresh grafts.

Amen to your comment on wisteria, mine covers half the house - narry a hint
of flower. It grows well enough, I suspect it's roots have found the soakaway from the septic tank !

re Mulberry cuttings, the books say it's quite easy, but not for me. My old Mum managed fine, so I must have done something wrong, unless they like Essex better than Norfolk.

"Tim Perry" wrote in message
...

Hi all, I have ordered some trees to be delivered this autumn. The
other half
said we have far too many apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, fig,
chestnut, walnut and hazel already, so she wanted something different,
O.K., I decided on mulberry, medlar and the sorbus x pyrus hybrid
shipova pear.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else grown a Shipova, and what are
your experiences of this tree.




--
Tim Perry

Hi Tim,

Sorry, can't answer your pear question as I haven't grown one, but we do get
a decent crop of flowers and fruit from our Loquat. In SE London on heavy
clay (but a fairly well-drained hilly site) it flowers in autumn, sets fruit
and holds it until spring, then generally gives up its crop around July
time.

Perry is the perfect name for a grower of pears :~) Perhaps you could
make some (perry, that is) when you get a crop. (Before you ask, I don't
have a recipe .. but someone here might).

Good luck.
Spider

Thanks Spider, I knew I'd seen then 'daan saaf' when I was a kid, I was sure I
didn't imagine it. Nan used to tell us they were poison 'cos she didn't want us
half inching them.

Blast, dunnow if they do grow up here in Narfik, but they got 2 choices.

You are on the ball with the surname, family originated from Somerset, and
used to make Perry, but that was back in the middle ages.

Shipova fruit, I am told, is plum sized, red, and has good flavour... we shall see.