June 2001

Our gooseberries are a modern type called Invicta. The two great advantages of this variety are heavy cropping (up to 20lb from a mature bush) and immunity to gooseberry mildew. This plant disease covers gooseberries with a nasty white growth that spoils the fruit, but thanks to skilful plant breeders, we don’t have to spray Invicta against it. Although our soft fruit is unsprayed, we can’t sell it as organic because of complicated organic certification rules.

Redcurrants, raspberries and Loganberries will crop next, we have to net them at great cost to keep our orchard’s large population of blackbirds and thrushes off or they would eat the lot. Next come the blackcurrants, which the birds don’t trouble so much, but they crop so heavily we don’t mind. The trouble with all these soft fruits is that they take so long to pick. We worked out 2 years ago that what we were getting for blackcurrants after marketing expenses was just enough to pay ourselves the national minimum wage as fruit pickers without anything for having grown them, so in other words if we paid pickers, we would be working for nothing. We therefore put the prices up, to about half the supermarket price, but then sold less fruit! The economic answer appears to be to value-add the produce by making jams and chutneys.

Speaking about birds, a pair of kestrels have been hovering around a lot lately., They have got used to seeing us and so come quite close, one swooped and caught a mouse just 40 feet away from us. Mice are a nuisance as they nibble the tree roots. Good for kestrels!

Regular orchard walking continues, particularly looking out for any branches dying of apple canker. Lots of new woody growths that are in the wrong place need to be removed, it is better to do this now than in the winter, as more light and air are the admitted into the growing tree, reducing fungal problems. Fruit thinning is almost complete, this is a job that always has to be re-done, as you never take enough fruits out on the first go round.

Midsummer’s day soon, time to harvest the garlic.