Worked with Sigrid today who looks after the herb garden and some sections of the fruit and veg. model garden, including the beds outside the Honest Sausage cafe.
Tied back the young shoots of fan trained Peach 'Rochester'. This is the time to do it whilst they are still very flexible. The aim is to try and save as much material as possible now, so there is more than enough when doing the main training work in mid-spring (later to avoid fungal disease Silver Leaf - Chondrostereum purpureum). To tie back we used the 'continuous string' method, which is just a way of tying a figure of 8 tie from stem to wire without cutting the string first so that wastage is minimal. String is looped round stem first, then figure of 8 is created with loose end, this then is tied to the wire (left over right, then a second knot to secure it - right over left). Then the string is cut off with the ends just under a inch long. A staple cord/ tape gun can also be used - this is easier when you have clear space to tie the stem to, otherwise string is better for trickier more dense spots.
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| Photo 1: Tying back young shoots of Peach 'Rochester'. |
Peaches are usually covered until around mid-May, to prevent them from getting fungal disease peach leaf curl - Taphrina deformans. This keeps the emerging shoots dry, because the disease is transferred via moisture (e.g. rain splash), basically the tree is kept covered until the shoot stems have browned and hardened off, then they are less likely to be affected.
Then I pruned some vines that were trained into a cordon around an arch. We cut back any long sideshoots from the main stem down to 5 nodes (not including the basal node of the sideshoot). And cut any sideshoots on the sideshoots themselves down to one leaf. Fruiting stems were cut back to two nodes above the last bunches of fruit. Any leaders that had gotten too long were tied and retrained underneath the arch of the frame, cutting any tendrils that would interwine or interfere with another vine. Use of ladder - you have to position it so that you are face forward to where you're working.
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| Photo 2: Tying back and pruning vines - there are four different varieties to each archway. |
Then we did some apple thinning - roughly a palm width between per apple, prioritising taking off diseased, damaged or lesser ones. In a cluster there can be the king fruit which usually is the biggest and has a shorter stubbier stalk and the bottom of the fruit can be like a knuckle - this is good to remove out of the cluster because it is overly vigorous.
I came across some apples that had watercore which looks like the apple had gotten wet inside and not dried off - it is a physiological condition that occurs when the ratio of nitrogen to calcium is too high. It gives the fruit a transparent appearance which is a result of a water retention and one of the fruit sugars around the core or throughout the flesh of the apple. In Japan they are highly prized because they will be the sweeter fruit and cultivate them especially them especially with this disorder. A slight amount of water core will have little effect on storage, but more severely affected fruit will tend to become brown over time.
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| Photo 3: Apple with water core. |