Will your spring blossom turn into bumper fruit crops?
Image courtesy of Kris Collins
Encouraged by a cold winter and a warm spring, ornamental blossom displays have been a joy to experience this year. The celebration of cherry blossom at RHS Garden Wisley gave Japan’s spring displays a run for their money! Whether you grow ornamental trees or fruiting varieties, T&M’s quality control manager Kris Collins shares advice on how to encourage beautiful blossom…
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Fruit trees are the best ornamental edible
Kris’s fruit trees are on track for a bumper harvest this season
Image courtesy of Kris Collins
There’s a towering ornamental cherry on the green outside my house. It dwarfs my morello cherry tree in comparison and, each spring, the white flowers fall like a week of snow. (Nice, but it buries my veg garden under a blanket of dried petals – worse than autumn leaf fall!)
While ornamental blossom is fleeting and to be enjoyed in the moment, the blossom from fruiting trees is full of further potential. My fruit trees flowered as hard as the ornamental types this spring, and I’m hoping to turn that into bumper harvests of apples, pears, damsons and cherries – if I can get to them before the kids and the birds!
How to encourage blossom to form
‘Stella’ is Britain’s favourite dessert cherry and one of the most beautiful in spring
Image: Cherry ‘Stella’ from T&M (© BGP)
In late winter I always apply a balanced fertiliser to help early growth and budding. Then, following the blossom display, I apply incredigrow Bigger and Better as a liquid foliar feed (use a spray bottle on the leaves for fast uptake) and to the roots when watering. I continue to do this regularly through the growing season to help support all the fruit growth. Foliar feeding throughout the season is particularly important for young and newly planted trees to ensure early fruit is supported and plants aren’t weakened in their first season.
For health, as well as cropping vigour, I also apply incredigrow Nourish and Nurture – a high calcium feed that acts as tonic to boost plant health and reduce the risk of apple bitter pit.
Tips for bumper fruit harvests this season
This beautiful blossom is the precursor to delicious fruit
Image courtesy of Kris Collins
Here are Kris’s quick tips on getting the best blossom, followed by a bumper crop of fruit:
- Mulch: Apply a layer of Strulch around the base of trees to trap moisture and reduce weed competition.
- Selective thinning: Apples naturally drop fruit in June, keeping only what the tree can support. On particularly heavily-cropping flower clusters, you may wish to do this yourself – nip out one or two, to generate fewer but larger fruit.
- Crop protection: Ripe cherries don’t hang on the tree for long! I’m determined to get a good crop this year and I’ll be covering my cherry tree in fleece as soon as the fruits start to ripen. You can cover a whole tree or individual branches.
It’s not too late to plant fruit trees, and if you’re short on space, you could always try growing dwarf fruit trees in containers. I’m really interested to see how your top fruit harvests turn out this season. Share your results with us on Facebook and Instagram or email us at pressoffice@thompson-morgan.com.
Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.