Enjoy some tasty delights
from your garden
A healthy crop of apples
in the making
In your fruit garden in July 2010
July is the month that the fruit garden comes into its own. Plants are laden with luscious ripening fruit. If you are going on holiday this month, remember to ask someone to keep harvesting your fruit, either for themselves or your freezer.
Continue to be vigilant in your pest and disease watch. Garden Organic members can view our Fruit Management factsheets which give you an idea of the things to look out for.
Remove nets as soon as the crop is harvested to allow the wildlife back in.
Things to do in the fruit garden this month
Top fruit
If the early season weather has been kind, your fruit trees may now be carrying a huge crop of fruit. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to reduce the number of fruits on the tree.
If a tree is carrys too large a crop, the individual fruits may be rather small and the weight of the fully grown fruit may be enough to break branches. A heavy crop may also mean a poorer crop the following year.
Firstly remove any diseased, damaged or unusually small fruits. Then harden your heart and carefully pick off any more as necessary to leave the remainder no less than 10cm apart (apples and pears) or 5cm (plums and gages).
Soft fruit
Strawberries
- Look after strawberries. Once fruiting has finished give your strawberry plants a haircut! Old leaves are of little use to the plants, and may be diseased. Trim off the leaves with a pair of shears, aiming to leave just a few leaves around the crown. New foliage will develop within a few weeks. Remove the straw mulch (if used) and weeds and clear away all debris from the crown. Put old leaves and straw on the compost heap.
- If your strawberries are in their third year of cropping, consider establishing a new bed.
- After three years of cropping, yield declines and plants are more likely to be infected with virus. Strawberry plants are supplied as runners either 'cold-stored', available from April to August or 'open ground', available from October to April. The advantage of the former is that they are likely to be established and fruiting well by the following summer. Plants set out after August will supply a progressively smaller harvest in the first year according to how late you plant them.
Deliciously ripe strawberries
ready for the clotted cream!
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For more advice, see our information sheet on How to grow strawberries for more information.
A wide selection of strawberry plants are available from the Organic Gardening Catalogue for order in Spring.
Blackcurrants
Blackcurrants
- before pruning
Blackcurrants
- after pruning
Redcurrants
ready for picking
-
A time-efficient way of pruning blackcurrants is to prune as you harvest! This way you can take some whole branches in to the kitchen and pick the currants at your leisure and with ease. Remove about one third of the bush each year, pruning low down to encourage new shoots from the base of plants. You'll find it's a bit of a compromise between cutting out old wood and leaving enough new wood for fruiting the following year.
- Continue training new canes of blackberries
and hybrids. Watch out for thorns!
Train the young shoots to wires against a fence or wall in one direction and the older fruiting canes in the opposite direction. Tie in with twine. This method makes picking and pruning simple.
Red and white currants and gooseberries
- Harvest red and white currants by pulling or snipping the strig (the long fruit cluster). Use a kitchen fork to remove the berries from each cluster. They freeze well if you simply lay the strigs out in a thin layer on an open tray.
- To improve the size of gooseberry fruits, thin the fruits out before they ripen. These can be cooked for use, leaving the remainder to plump up for eating fresh.
- Summer prune red and white currants and
gooseberries. Trim back all sideshoots to 3 or 4 buds from their
point of growth. Cut out crossing shoots in the middle of the bush. Summer
pruning allows more air
circulation, lets light in to ripen the fruit and reduces disease. It
also encourages fruit bud formation for next year.
Raspberries
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Prune summer fruiting raspberries after all the fruit has been picked. Cut down to ground level the canes that have just borne fruit. These canes should be easy to identify as they will be tied into the supporting wires. . If they weren't tied in look for the browner wood with the remains of old fruit clusters still hanging. . The younger canes (produced this summer) will be fresh and green.
After the old canes have been cut out, tie in new canes, spacing them about 4in (10cm) apart. Only tie in strong looking canes and prune out any that look weak. Canes growing away from the row should be dug or pulled up, or they will continue to creep.
More advice here on thinning and summer
pruning of fruit trees and bushes
Pest & disease watch
- Make time to make a weekly inspection of fruit as
things can get out of balance very quickly at this time of year.
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White or yellow streaking on strawberry leaves is caused by June Yellows. It looks similar to variegation but is caused by a virus-like, non-infectious disorder of genetic origin. Replace affected plants as the condition will get progressively worse year on year.
Control grey mould, especially on strawberries. Spells of wet weather encourage grey mould (botrytis). Inspect fruits frequently and remove infected ones. Compost the fruits in an active hot heap – for more information see our organic guide to 'How to make compost'. If you have not put mulch under your strawberries yet, time is of the essence, as this will help reduce an outbreak of botrytis.
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Peaches and nectarines need protection from wasps and birds. To protect wall or fence trained fruit drape fleece or fine mesh over the tree. Secure it to a supporting structure, ensuring no gaps. Free standing trees can also be draped with fleece, if you can secure it at ground level.
Raspberry Rust is a common, but rarely a serious fungal disease - but it can cause early leaf drop and reduced vigour. The control measures, if practicable, are to pick off and destroy infected leaves. Rake up and remove all fallen leaves too.
Alternatively, consider re-planting in a new site with a variety that has a degree of rust resistance, such as the cultivar ‘Glen Prosen’.
- Continue to carry out a weekly inspection of gooseberries, concentrating on the centre of the bush for larvae of gooseberry sawfly. Pick off and destroy.
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Inspect apples for woolly aphids. Look
for distorted growth and a whitish fluffy coating on bark.
See our Aphid factsheet for more information
See our Woolly aphid factsheet for control measures
(Online access to factsheets requires members' password) Cut out apple twigs and leaves infected with powdery mildew.
See our Powdery mildew factsheet for more information
(Online access to factsheets requires members' password)- Look on apples and plums for faded, speckled leaves with a fine webbing on the surface. This indicates fruit tree red spider mite. Pick off and destroy the leaves if there are only a few. There are numerous predatory mites and insects in the garden that control these mites.
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Hang up codling moth pheromone traps in apple trees. Codling moth larvae tunnel into small fruits and may invade the core, spoiling a lot of the flesh. The sticky traps lure the male moths so disrupt their mating cycle.
See our Codling moth factsheet for more information
(Online access to factsheets requires members' password) Capsid bugs are tiny elusive insects that can cause small ragged holes in leaves. Apple fruits develop raised bumps and scabby patches. To avoid an influx of capsid bugs next season think ahead by encouraging predators that feed on the pest. Birds can be encouraged to feed near apple, pear, plum and hawthorn trees in winter by hanging fat and bags of nuts from branches. Grow wildflowers and annual flowering plants around trees providing a habitat for predators.
Tidy up over winter, raking out leaf litter and clearing away any plant debris. Cultivation around plants also helps to disturb and expose these pests to predators.
June Yellows
Gooseberry sawfly larvae
Powdery mildew on apples
Codling moth pheromone trap
Capsid Damage on a Currant Bush
back to - What to do in your garden now
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