Tree troubles

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So, where to start? Maybe with the trees, as they are my latest pride and joy in the garden. I knew last year when I moved in that I wanted two trees, a sweet cherry and a mirabelle de nancy plum, as my grandad had one when I was a child and I love the sweet, yellow cherry plums. As I couldn’t find a nursery to stock them in Scotland, I ordered them from a nursery down South to be delivered this March, ready for planting. As usual, I got completely carried away when confronted with all those lovely trees and plants, and ended up going for a ‘Garden Lady’ Peach tree for the pation (in a container) and a lot of Malling Admiral raspberry plants as well as the two I had intended to.

So, in March the whole lot arrived, and after a stressful weekend of planting in ‘driech’ weather the trees were happily ensconced in their designated places and the raspberries secured by the fence. Now all I could do was wait.

Then, in April, the first buds started appearing on the trees and especially the peach tree was vigurously producing leaves. But wait….why are the leaves so ugly and curly? Why are there unsightly blisters all over them? After some research I found out that the tree was affected by peach leaf curl, a fungal disease which overwinters in the bark. Unfortunately there seems to be nothing I can do about it until autumn, which is soooo infuriating. I was really hoping the tree would get a chance to get established this year and start producing a decent crop sooner rather than later, but with this it looks like there might be a little bit of a wait for fresh peaches from the garden. I just hope the tree will recover after such a bad start…

Anyway, the cherry tree seems to be doing fine, and is completetly covered in luscious, dark green leaves. I am not sure what shape it will eventually turn out as – when it arrived it only had two large branches, and looked like a lopsided Y, but now the top of the longer leader branch has sprouted 4-5 new branches, so with the leaves it looks like a gigantic green haired muppet now. I hope by the time I need to start pruning it in autumn it will have become clearer what I am meant to prune…

The Mirabelle tree is doing really well too, with the hot weather having induced a phenomenal grwoth spurt over the last five weeks. At the end of April it barely had the tiniest buds, now it is covered in lovely fresh green leaves and has branch spurs all over. SO glad the weather has been this good in its first season – this will hopefully give it a good start for a long, productive life.

• 1 Jun, 2009
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