What crop are you growing this year? (1 Viewer)

Bastards! Not an apple on our trees this year.

Endless tomatoes though, grew some decent types, interesting to see the difference in yields depending on the strain.
 
That's less than half the apples off a not particularly big tree. May have mentioned it before, it's the variety with bright pink flesh which looks like ribena when it's juiced
 
 
How did you get started, MB? Did you have to get special seed garlic?
yes - bought 'horticultural' garlic i think years ago, but we've just been keeping cloves each time since and replanting. was it yourself i collected a load of coffee stuff off a few years back? i could arrange to drop some cloves in to you.

IIRC most shop bought garlic is soft neck, but hard neck garlic is more suited to our climate.
 
We don't even know what kind of apple trees we have!

Been reading about the Coccagee apple tree


(Amazing name of course)
 
is there any great age to the tree? one of the purposes of irish seed savers is to identify and rescue old irish apple varieties, and they offer an identification service. probably only worth it if you reckon it could be a heritage variety.
 
is there any great age to the tree? one of the purposes of irish seed savers is to identify and rescue old irish apple varieties, and they offer an identification service. probably only worth it if you reckon it could be a heritage variety.
I would doubt they're anything too old or special but we're signed up to seedsavers so will bear it in mind. I reckon 10-20 years old knowing the previous inhabitants of this house and the size of the trees, but there's a small chance they're much older, you probably need to actually have a few apples to check them! There was one or two little bitty ones a month or so ago but they're long gone to the crows.

The whole orchard area was completely overgrown and abandoned (and I don't know for how long) until i cleared a load of it last January, gonna continue that task over winter this year, hopefully next year will be a better year for them.

I'll ask the neighbours if i run into them, they'll at least know roughly how old the trees are. Maybe.
 
Thinking about it, i didn't even see the crab apple tree blossoming this year, i reckon the very mild winter we had here (West Kerry) is to blame, barely any frosty days


Or are apples biennial and if these were all planted the same year (I have no idea) I'm just being a thicko?

Are there pollinators around your place?

I'd see some bumble bees since the spring, and the numbers have been increasing up to now at least, although different ones at different times of the year. Also honey bees from about the start of the summer. Not that many hoverflies, but some.

There's a big honeysuckle that;s out of the wind, and a few things that most lads are into.

But yeah, if there's nothing pollinating your tree it could be an issue?
 
Are there pollinators around your place?

I'd see some bumble bees since the spring, and the numbers have been increasing up to now at least, although different ones at different times of the year. Also honey bees from about the start of the summer. Not that many hoverflies, but some.

There's a big honeysuckle that;s out of the wind, and a few things that most lads are into.

But yeah, if there's nothing pollinating your tree it could be an issue?
There's a literal beehive in a sycamore tree about 10 feet from our house, no lack of pollinators.

We're not here long enough to know for sure what happened but I reckon it was the lack of a cold snap last winter, it never even got down to freezing.

Good thinking though! I hope it isn't just the land rejecting us as outsiders.
 
There's a literal beehive in a sycamore tree about 10 feet from our house, no lack of pollinators.

We're not here long enough to know for sure what happened but I reckon it was the lack of a cold snap last winter, it never even got down to freezing.

Good thinking though! I hope it isn't just the land rejecting us as outsiders.
Yeah. It's a learning game with new places alright.

Up the road from me is Ballymaloe House & farm. I can always have a look in there if I need to feel massively intimidated.
I haven;t heard the cold snap theory before. They were handing out little runty apples the other day in BM, I haven't actually looked at their apple crops yet but it would have been similarly mild round here. I could ask and see what they say.

It's a bit of an annoying answer though. What's the solution to no cold snap? Solve climate change? I suppose if you could sort that out, this winter say, it would be helpful. Put that on the list.
 
our apple trees were shit last year and came back with avengence this year. The only mild thing i did at all was sorta shore up the area around them, layered all the grass clippings in there and made the soil just under them about two inches deeper. I know nothing though
 
I figure it has to be a weather thing of some kind because it affected all the trees, some of which i had pruned, some of which i didn't touch, and at least one of which is a massive crab apple tree in a totally different field.

It might be not cold snap related at all, you'd think there'd be enough cold hours over a few months of Irish nightime, regardless of whether or not it's going down to freezing.
 
loads of people i know say it's been a bumper year for apples and other fruit. we're still going through the damsons, the plums are all gone
 
There's a literal beehive in a sycamore tree about 10 feet from our house, no lack of pollinators.

We're not here long enough to know for sure what happened but I reckon it was the lack of a cold snap last winter, it never even got down to freezing.

Good thinking though! I hope it isn't just the land rejecting us as outsiders.

Where do you live? My dads apple trees (Laois) got scotched by a late frost in April/may. The sort of thing that would be gone by morning, but could finish off new flowers
 
Where do you live? My dads apple trees (Laois) got scotched by a late frost in April/may. The sort of thing that would be gone by morning, but could finish off new flowers
We're in West Kerry. The climate is, uh, eccentric. Funnily enough I have family in Laois and their apple trees did amazing this year.
 

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