In The Garden: Fruit Trees To Grow In Autumn

0:00Player FM's In the Garden. With Clon Road Garden Center, Clon Road Business Park. In the heart of Venice. Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting out, our friendly staff are here to help your garden grow. Open six days a week, Monday to Saturday. And delighted to be joined once again by Judy back from the Clon Road Garden Center, Judy Hart though. I'm great for this first show, a gardening show for September. Yes, we are into, we are into autumn. And thank you for being with us. Oh, it's 618, 1964 for those gardening questions. They're flowing in just a reminder, there is a 25 euro voucher for the Clon Road Garden Center to be won. So send in your gardening question with your name. And I'll put it to Judy a little later on. But you mentioned autumn, Judy. And that is part of the theme for this week's topic, which is fruit trees to grow in autumn. Yeah, and I suppose now people are going to be beginning to harvest a lot of that fruit from their fruit trees. So great time to think about getting fruit trees into the ground.

1:03And lots of varieties available in garden centers on the Clon Road Garden Center. And I've made me think about it really was because I was doing the Camino in Spain last week. And I couldn't get over the amount of fruit trees that they have growing there in the countryside. Just amazing. And I know we can't very easily grow grapes and figs and kiwis. I saw growing there too. Now none of them are impossible to grow here, of course, but it's more difficult. But the plenty of trees we can grow. And even for all size gardens, and as I say, a great time of year now, in autumn to be doing the harvesting. Yeah, really is. And I'm speaking as the owner of two fruit trees, an apple tree and a plum tree. And I was going to say, the extent of my looking at them is hitting them with a stick when it's time to get to plums and the apples down. But why is autumn a good time to plant fruit trees, sir? Well, the soil is still warm from the summer, so it gives the roots a great chance to get established before the winter. And also, there's, you know,

2:04usually plenty of rain around as well, so they're not going to dry out in the autumn. So it's a perfect time to get fruit trees into the ground and have them established for next spring when you should get your lovely spring blossoms and you may even get a bit of fruit next year because generally they actually fruit quite early as an early age. But you know, they do say, and you're saying you don't give a lot of attention to your fruit trees, but the safe fruit trees are like good friends. You only need to see them a few times a year, and you help each other out a little bit, and then you go away with presents. I must be the best of friends at mine, so. So you can make good friends with your fruit trees. I can tell you, because you really do appreciate what they give back to you for very little work. So other benefits of autumn planting, of course, would be that they will have active root growth during the autumn, because things are still growing, and the roots will get a good grip on the soil in the next few months. It's a lot less stressful for them with the cooler air temperatures

3:07and the regular rainfall. And then that means less maintenance, of course, so non-noff lot of watering in the autumn. And you get fewer pests when the weather is cooler, so young saplings, young trees, get a good head start and get nice and strong before they get bothered by pests. And then, of course, in the next spring, they'll burst into hopefully spring foliage and flowers and start into their fruit production. OK, and you mentioned that fruit trees can be quite bountiful in terms of what they offer up, and I can testify to that because my apple tree plum tree, the amount of fruit that comes after them is astronomical, but it is the apple tree, the humble apple tree that is the most reliable and easiest to grow in this country. It is, and apart from really wet ground, apple trees will nearly grow anywhere. They quite like this cool damp climate that we have, and the generally quite dependable for harvesting.

4:09Good choices, especially for the West-Viriland conditions, would be lovely dessert varieties, like Discovery, El Star and Katie, would be a few of the well-known ones. And I also say, you know, grow what you eat or grow with kids eat, so get a nice sweet tasting apple that you will use, and they won't just go to waste. And, of course, Irish cooking apple, bramly seedling is really good. If you have the space for it, it can get into quite a big tree, but if you have the space for cooking apple, the fabulous to have, and of course they store well for your apple tarts. Lovely job, Lee, but one fruit tree I don't have, but I should get one because of my favorite fruit, is pear, pear trees. Yeah, and lots of different varieties. Conference would probably be the one that I would recommend best. So, you don't need to, of them, and there are a few other pear trees that are self-pollinating like that.

5:09If you can put the men a fairly sunny spot, just to get a nice sweet pear, the sunnier it is, the better sweetness you'll get from it, and even against a nice warm, south-facing wall. And, of course, and again, it welds right in, where, you know, it's not going to be sitting in a puddle over winter. The most fruit trees just don't like that. Okay, and next is the other fruit tree. I have my garden in the plum tree. What can you tell us? Yeah, plum. Victoria would be the one that I would personally like. It's a lovely purple plum. It tends to grow very well in the west of Ireland. Very, can be very productive now. I know some years plum's don't fruit at all, and that can be for a variety of reasons, but some of them are my only fruit, for example, every second year. But when they do fruit, while you can really get a huge crop. And again, Victoria is self-fertile, meaning you don't need two different trees, and generally handles the damp weather that we get very well.

6:12The other fruit tree, of course, that probably not as popular to grow, but cherry trees. And there's different types. There's sweet cherries, and there's sour varieties as well. Sour varieties be more for cooking and for making jam, that kind of thing. But lovely sweet dessert cherries. And again, you get fabulous blossoms in the spring before getting the fruit. So a lot of different interests around the year. And again, if you can put the cherry tree into a funny, a sunny sheltered area of the garden, it will do better. And not just fruit trees, you've got fruit bushes as well, of course, and autumn's a really good time for putting in your fruit bushes, such as raspberries. And if you have autumn raspberries, people are probably harvesting them now in September. They come in yellow and red raspberries. Absolutely delicious. I love raspberries. Blueberries, another one you can plant, though most people need to keep them in a pot, because they have, they need specific soil. But blackcurrants, gooseberries,

7:13and even, you know, some people even plant blackberries, believe it or not, even though it's plenty in the countryside. But you can get thornless blackberries, and that's one of the reasons that people plant them in the garden, though with the amount of blackberries around this year, I think just after the good summer, there's a great crop around. And of course, the blackberry, the briars, as people call them, grew really well, even with the drought, when other plants were suffering. Blackberries seem to thrive. I think I got across the briars of growth. And what should people consider before planting? Yes, so think about your own garden, your own little microclimate, and your own soil. Most fruit prefers a nice fertile soil, in a fairly deep soil, wouldn't like a two-stony, and acid to neutral soil. So if it's a bit limy, you might need to try and bring down that lime a bit. But a neutral soil, which most people would have fairly close to neutral. And, you know, if you could add some manure or compost,

8:17if you are a bit limy, and that should help. Again, as I was saying, a reasonably sheltered site, where you get plenty of sun, gooseberries and serritories will be okay in an area that doesn't have full sun, but most fruit would prefer full sun. And if you can avoid frost pockets, and one of the main reasons for that is that if you're in a frost, if you put it in a frost pocket, if you get a late frost, and the fruit trees are in blossom and spring, your blossom will be damaged, and you won't get any fruit that year. Okay, and thank you for all that advice and tips, Judy. Just a reminder, your gardening questions to Judy, to 086, 1809, 64. This is a 25-year-old voucher for the Clonrod Garden Sandro 2B1. But before we get to those, Judy, some jobs for our king gardeners for the coming week. Yes, so this morning all our bulbs arrived into stocks. We have boxes and boxes of beautiful spring flowering bulbs, waiting for me in the garden center when I go back.

9:17But really good time now. Well, you have great choice to buy your daftles, your tulips, your irises, snow drops, blue bells, all those bulbs are in stock now. A really good budget way to get them into the ground, to get lots of color into your garden. Then other things this week, watch out for vine weevil. A nasty little pest, it's a little kind of beetle-like pest, lays eggs at the root of your plants and cause a lot of damage, particularly bad in pots. Not so bad ones in the garden, because you'll find other things, will eat those eggs and they will create a balance. But in pots, they don't have a lot of predators and they can really cause a lot of damage to your plants. That's the nasty little vine weevil. Vagetable plants for September. You can still sow things like spinach, radish, rocket. Great time now to do that, if you want to get a little bit more into your vegetable garden.

10:17Just a reminder that as the nights get colder, you might need to start closing the doors and windows of your glass house or polytunnel. So just keep an eye on the temperatures. Okay, Judy, thank you very much for that. Let's get to the questions that are coming in. And first up is Mary Intulla, who says, good morning, Judy. I have a laryl hedge, but a part of it has gone brown with yellow leaves. It seems to be spreading and Mary's looking for advice on what to do about that. So laryl is pretty hardy and hopefully it will recover. There's possibly a couple of reasons. One would be that it has, it does dry summer. Turned a lot of laryl. So if you have fairly shallow ground and you don't have a lot of deep soil, then your ground will be dried out more than others. And you might find that even in parts, but not all of the edges gone brown because some parts of your soil are more shallow. And that would be one of the main reasons this year for a laryl hedge that went brown. Now another reason, if it's a fairly new hedge and you put the laryl hedge into,

11:18if you have soil that's very wet, now it's a less likely scenario this time of year. But some people plant laryl into wet ground and one thing laryl hates is wet soil. So if you do have naturally just a very wet site, then the laryl may not suit it. But I would say more cyclist scenario is that drought from this summer. Okay, Mary, thank you very much for your question. Anne is up next. She says, good morning. My gardening question is to do with my lawn. My lawn is brand new and it has taken off great after only being seeded last month. But it has grown full of duck leaves and weeds. Before we cut it for the very first time as the grass is quite long, will we try and pull them one by one before cutting it or is there something we can spray on them or will that kill the grass too? Some people have said after a few cuts that the weeds will automatically disappear which I am dubious about. So what is your advice, please, Judy? Also do we need to feed the new lawn and with what? And how often?

12:18Thank you. So Anne is a nice question detailed, but I think it's a question that contains multitudes within it. Yeah, so... So I guess the new lawn and the duck leaves and weeds what should Anne do about that? Will they go after a while automatically disappear? Yeah, it definitely helps because as the grass gets stronger grass will outcompete weeds and that will definitely... When you're cutting it, you hardly will even notice the weeds because you'll just see green. Now, there is a lawn weed killer, which means it kills weeds and it doesn't kill lawns. So if you spray it and it hits the grass, it's fine. That's what I think she's worrying about as well that if she uses a weed killer, it will kill her grass. But actually there's a particular weed killer, selective weed killer that will only kill broad leaf plants. So it will only kill the duck leaves and the other broad leaves without killing your lawn. Now, if you have a small lawn and I hate to promote any kind of weed killers, much better to do things naturally if you can. Yes, you can pull the weeds by hand,

13:19but with duck leaves with the long root, it's hard to get them out, to be honest. So what I would advise is yes, go ahead and cut your lawn and you will see that the grass will get thicker and stronger as you cut it. Now, there's not a huge amount of cutting time left in the year, but I wouldn't put down any of the autumn. We don't feed your lawn at all. You shouldn't feed a new lawn for at least six months because that could damage it. The way too strong lawn feed is way too strong for a new lawn. So don't do that. If you want to do a little spot on weed killer, you can do with that lawn weed killer. Or you can pull them by hand. But yes, as you mower, it will definitely improve. You won't get rid of all the weeds, but the grass will definitely help to outcompete some of those weeds. So that's our choices. Okay, very good. And Anne was wondering as well about what you could do to feed the new lawn. Yeah, no, you wouldn't feed the lawn this year. Wait until next year. Wait until spring at least.

14:20So you wait at least six months to feed a new lawn. Okay, there you go. And thanks very much for your question. And next up, as listener, this is from Moran Ennis who says, Hi, Alan and Judy, when do we sell the winter onions? And will you have them in for us? Thanks for all your advice. Yes, we will now. I don't think the winter onions came in with our bulbs today. So it could be another week. But you've plenty of time to put them down. So onions and garlic will be coming in shortly. And we will put them up on all our social media pages when they arrive in. But I don't think I saw them now. I was running out this morning to Claire Reffem to see Alan. Oh, yeah, it's all our fault. We can check all the boxes yet. But they are, if they're not in this week, they'll be in next week. Okay, very good. And thank you for your question. There are more. And Conor and Dumbeg says, Hi, Alan and Judy. Ah, and it's to do with fruit trees, which is quite apt. He says, a connoisseur says, I have an apple tree. Very small crop this year. Is there any tonic I can give it? The best term feed for apple trees is potash, sulfate or potash.

15:23So you can give it that. If you have any fish, but on bone, you could use that as well. It's really good for apple trees. I'm sorry, I wonder why it's a small crop now. If Conor has only one apple tree, you do need two apple trees for pollination. So it's possible that the other apple trees, that's pollinating. His apple tree is a little bit far away. And so he's not getting proper pollination. Otherwise, of course, possibly if he's saying it's been good other years, but not this year. Whatever apple tree he was relying on for pollination, I wonder if it's still there or if the people got rid of that apple tree. Ideally, he'd have two apple trees in his own garden, so he wouldn't need to worry about that problem. Because it was a good year for the post-nanny late frosts. So there's no particular reason that I can see he hasn't had a good harvest, apart from pollination being the problem. But a sulfate apart ash is really good for fertilizing apple trees. Okay, so there you go Conor. Try the sulfate of a pot ash. We do have to finish it there.

16:24But you had quite a detailed question, but very considered one. And thank you for that. And you have won the 25-year revacher for the Clawan Road Garden Center. So thank you very much for that. And thank you to you, Judy, for coming in as well. See you next week. Judy back there from the Clawan Road Garden Center with us for in the garden, and indeed, if you ever have a gardening question on any day of the week, Judy's with us on Mondays, but any day of the week send them in. And we'll put them to her the next time she is in.