Tree Fruit Harvests Over the Last 4 Years

I decided to stew some of our quinces with sugar to make a sort of quince compote. It’s the first time we've had enough fruit to consider using them on their own without apples. 

This is the first couple of batches stewed and awaiting containers so that it can be squirrelled away in the freezer. Having tasted this gorgeous stewed fruit for the first time it’s strange it’s never become more popular. I'm assuming as it can’t be eaten raw that’s a bit of a draw back. Perhaps the ornamental quinces and their rock hard fruits are something others remember and decide to stay well away. 

With our quinces harvested that’s completed our tree fruit harvest for this year. We might still have the odd medlar to pick but as we are still searching for a favourable way of using any of this fruit I'm not going to include it in my tree fruit summary. The table below is a summary of our apple, cherry, greengage, pear, plum and quince harvest over the last 4 years.

I think it’s clear from the table that we have good years and very good years usually managing to harvest a decent crop of fruit although we can’t be sure exactly what fruit it will be. Amazingly our ‘ancient’ apple hedge made up of old cordon apple trees, which are full of canker and other nasty looking problems, produces a reasonable crop each year which is more than can be said for some of our newer trees. Our plot grown pear trees owe us a good crop, especially ‘Delsanne’ with a crop of only 1.4kg over the last 4 years. The other big disappointment is our cherry “Summer Sun”. Each spring it produces masses of flowers and looks very pretty, promising a bounty of cherries which never materialise. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett