physalis

Fruit trees

7th Dec 2019Leave a Comment

Short version:

The winter is a great time to plant perennial cheaper ‘bare root’ fruit trees. Planting 2 of each type of fruit can help increase yields. With the new hardier and more disease resistant varieties out there, we are no longer restricted to the usual apple, pear, cherry and plum trees that the generations before us were. There are now figs, grapes, peaches and mulberries that can be grown outdoors. For the adventurous there are also kiwi, passion fruit and certain types of guavas. Also don’t forget the berry bushes, like blueberry and raspberry, which also come much cheaper as bare root.

When the trees are dormant, they are sold more cheaply as bare root. This means that storing and transport is cheaper so winter is a great time to populate the garden with fruit trees. Fruit trees are perennial. You can plant them once and keep harvesting off them during their lifespan. Keep in mind though, that they can take several years to begin bearing fruit. These are for the long game.

Most fruit trees suitable for the garden starts with a dwarfing root stock. This is basically the lower half of the tree – the roots and the trunk. This rootstock determines the eventual height of the tree, which will be somewhere between 1m to 4m depending on how dwarfing the rootstock is. The rootstock may also provide better disease resistance, hardiness or sturdiness.

This is where the branch has been grafted on. When I received the tree (via post) the graft had come away. Luckily after I tied it back together the branch survived.

Another reason for a rootstock is that you can’t grow a fruit variety from seed. For example, all Granny Smith apple trees are clones of the original Granny Smith. Basically, someone somewhere discovered or bred this variety with a taste they like. They then named it (and probably patented it too). From then onwards if you want to have a tree that grows apples that taste like Granny Smiths you get a branch from a Granny Smith and graft it onto your rootstock. It probably won’t be the original tree but a clone of the original, which is basically the same thing. You can read more about why seeds don’t always produce plants that are the same variety as the parents in ‘Pollination, fertilisation and variation’

And…. Another fab thing about grafting is that you get fruit sooner as you are not growing from seed. And… wouldn’t you know there’s even more to love. One of the great things about grafting fruit trees is that you can get a single tree with more than one variety on it.

This fab apple tree round the corner from us has 2 different varieties of apple growing on it. Even the leaves are a slightly different shade. There are plenty of very green/yellow apples on the right, but if you look carefully, you can see the red/yellow ones on the left.

I absolutely love my fruit trees. I have an apple, a pear and a cherry tree. Each one of these have 5 varieties grafted onto them. Yup! That’s not a typo. Each tree has 5 varieties. This may not turn out to be such a great thing in the long run, but I love the novelty of it. I was amazed to find these trees, and then even more amazed to find that they have survived and have grown well. Even more important than the novelty of more than one variety on a fruit tree, is that with fruit, a pollination partner is important. Some trees won’t pollinate themselves. This also includes 2 different trees of the same variety as they will be clones. You’ll have some varieties (self-sterile) that won’t grow any fruit if there isn’t another tree of the same species but of different variety nearby. I.e. it has to be the same type (apple with apple, pear with pear) of fruit, but cannot be the same variety. There is then an added complication of apple trees that open their flowers at different times. This means that there are specific pollination partners within pollination groups. There are some varieties that are self fertile (they can pollinate themselves), but these will bear more fruit when there is a pollination partner.

Apples and pears don’t tend to have problems, especially in high population, suburban areas, as often there are other people in the local area with an apple or pear. If you do find a tree with a couple of varieties grafted onto the same trunk, they are often pollination partners.

Cherry tree. You can only see 2 varieties here.

I didn’t buy these as bare root though. I was doing up the garden in the early summer and was far too impatient. The first summer in the garden there was no fruit as expected as they had only been in there about 2 months or so. The second year (only really 14/15months) the apple had a couple of fruit that dropped before they were ripe, the pear produced 2 varieties and the cherry produced 3 varieties. The following year we managed to get 4 varieties of apple, 2 varieties of pear (though weirdly, it was 2 different varieties to the previous year) and 3 varieties of cherry (I’m not sure if it was the same 3 varieties as the previous year). With different varieties you need to be careful to ensure via pruning that one variety doesn’t become too dominant. Another drawback of the many varieties on one tree is that if a tree dies, then you are losing all of your different varieties.

This is where I bought these trees:

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-apple-5-varieties-on-one-tree

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-pear-5-varieties-on-one-tree

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-cherry-5-varieties-on-one-tree

Because it is unusual to have that many varieties on one tree there are more limited options for buying. These are pot grown and according to the website, no other nurseries do that many varieties so your only choice is the pot grown. These ones are also on very dwarfing rootstock and so the trees are only expected to grow to 6-8ft.

If you’d rather not have the expense of pot grown, you can still get a bare rooted twin tree. Here is a website, but I’ve not bought any fruit trees from here. These ones here are on less dwarfing rootstock:

https://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/twin-fruit-trees-cid292.html

The biggest problem with city gardens and fruit trees is the lack of space. You can do things like fan train, espalier or just tie and prune to ensure that your tree doesn’t take up too much of your garden. You can use a tree to make a living fence or screen.

The following photos were taken on a visit to The Lost Gardens of Heligan:

This espalier pear forms an effective screen. It also allows for better air circulation and the branches don’t shade each other.

Unfortunately we don’t have space for a tunnel like this. Instead we have:

Seedless dessert grapes being trained over a pergola to provide shade over this bench.

In addition to the common English garden varieties, there are now more options. There are more hardy and disease resistant varieties that can now be grown. It is not necessary to have a green house as there are hardy varieties of things like figs, grapes, kiwis, passionfruit, and mulberries that grow in our garden. We don’t have a peach or medlar tree but I have heard that these are possible too. When you select a tree make sure you check details on how they taste, pollination partners, how hardy it is and if that variety is known to fruit in your climate. It’s a long list but there’s no point growing a fruit tree that survives the winter if the fruit doesn’t ripen in your climes, or if the fruit does ripen but tastes pants. Slightly less important, but still worth considering, is what is the final height of the tree and also how long it takes before it begins to produce fruit.

Our fig had 2 ripe fruit in the first year, nothing at all the second and 6 figs that didn’t ripen this year.

There are also plenty of berry bushes that do brilliantly in the UK. Our blueberries, raspberries, Chilean guava, blackberries, gooseberries and physallis seem to thrive. I’ve also seen goji berries at my parents and blackcurrants in some random nearby garden doing brilliantly.

Just about ready to pick physallis, growing in a semi shady spot.

20th Sep 201910 Comments

Short version:

A yellow berry that grows inside an attractive case. It has seeds like a tomato and tastes sweet when ripe with a pineapple like tang. The plant grows up to 5 feet tall, prefers full sun but is not particularly fussy about soil types. It can be perennial when protected in winter and self-seeds in an unpredictable (I’ll explain what I mean) but not overly aggressive way.

I’m calling it physalis through this page but I’m are specifically talking about Physalis Peruviana. Also called cape gooseberry, Inca berry or ground cherry. There are other physalis – like Chinese lanterns – which, though beautiful, are not particularly edible.

I saw this absolutely stunning Chinese lantern in a local garden but I haven’t tried them as I could be (quite rightly) done for trespassing and then stealing. Besides reading indicates that the fruits, that are smaller then the cape gooseberry, are very bitter and/or toxic.

Physalis is a fruit that is occasionally found in supermarkets or sitting proudly on top of your dessert in a posh restaurant. They look lovely and taste great.

I planted seeds in 2014, in a pot, in our last home which was a paved over yard. The extra heat from all the concrete provided a great environment for the ripening of the fruit. I haven’t had to sow seeds again since. It is usually annual when grown outdoors in the UK. With winter protection and/or mild winters it can be a perennial.

Sowing seeds

You can start them indoors in pots around a month and a half before the last frosts are expected. They need to be sown fairly shallow (just place on the surface and sprinkle a little bit of compost over the top), then kept warm and moist. I would suggest one seed per pot as it can become quite a monster, unless you’re happy to plant a few together and then only let the strongest one live. I find it really hard to not feel guilty killing healthy plants. Can you imagine taking that attitude towards pets or children?

Planting out

Once all danger of frost has passed and the plant has a few leaves you can plant in a sunny spot. It doesn’t seem to be too bothered with soil types and does fine in a large pot. It is advisable to harden them off by placing the plants outside during the day and bringing them back in for the night for a few days. The stems can grow tall but will fall over and sprawl if not supported.

This monster is one single plant in a border in my front garden. It has reached over 5ft. At the front and to the right you can see the stems have fallen over in a bid to take over.

Taste

Okay… so I did these first two steps in 2014. I wasn’t sure what to expect so I planted about 8 seeds. I ended up with far too many plants. If you have too many plants in a pot, they won’t grow particularly large (around 2 ft) but you will still get fruit. They were a bit of an unruly, bushy mass which was a welcome sight in my paved yard.

The berries grow inside green cases which turn yellow and papery. That’s when you know that they’re ripe and edible. They make me think of bananas. Not because of the taste, but because these lovely cases keep the fruit clean so even when the fruit has dropped it can be removed from their protective husk and eaten straight away. My little one loves foraging for ripe berries as we leave for school or come home. She sometimes stuffs them in her pocket for a snack later. The fruit tastes only very slightly like pineapples, with that tart pineapple tang. When very ripe they are lovely and sweet. I don’t really think that I have anything to compare them to. There are hard little seeds similar in size to tomatoes that I like to chew, but some people don’t appreciate them so much. There can be a bit of a bitter residue on the outside of the berry that comes from the papery case, reminiscent of earwax (I don’t eat earwax – but who didn’t taste their own as a child? Er…Only me? OK). If you wash the whole thing with the cases on, this taste becomes more prominent so – dehusk and wash the berries separately. I’ve read the residue comes off more easily with a bit of vinegar (so… really… quite earwax like no?) but they never make it as far as the kitchen in this house. We’ve found that the berries ripen gradually over about 1-2 months, depending on the weather so we pick them as they ripen and eat them straight away. Towards the end of the season you will probably experience a glut.

Self-seeding

So… as I’ve said, I planted it once. The next year I wasn’t going to grow them as we only had this tiny yard and a finite number of pots. I was going to try something else but in 2015 they came up through cracks in the pavement. One was in front of the bike shed so I rescued that and put it in a pot. The rest I just let them get on with it. They grew fine and we had some bonus unplanned fruit. This is how I knew it was resilient and would grow just about anywhere. These plants were only in part sun and still did OK.

In 2016 I had the baby to deal with and so neglected the garden a bit more. There were no new seedlings that year, but the one in the pot from the previous year grew back. It must have been in a particularly warm and sheltered spot as there were no other plants.

In 2017 we moved house and took a self-seeded one in a pot with us. It was probably too small a pot, didn’t like the move, the lack of water or in fact the complete neglect as it only gave us about 5 berries.

In 2018 there was nothing. I didn’t expect anything with so little fruit the previous year and therefore no chance of a stray berry self-seeding itself.

In the spring of 2019 in one of the pots a physalis plant turned up. I was very excited. Around 25 pots of various sizes came with us in the move. Most of the plants were in pots in preparation to be planted into the new garden. One or two plants have remained in their pots and the compost in the pots have generally been moved around and/or added to the compost bin every now and then. I guess there was a seed that hadn’t germinated that had received its ideal conditions this year. The spring was warm, and the seed must have made it close to the surface of the soil. I put it straight into the front garden where it received plenty of sun and the concrete slabs and adjacent brick wall would retain and reflect the heat.

I then found a single physalis seedling hiding in the asparagus patch in June. The asparagus is at the very end of the garden, nowhere near the pots. It was a bit of a puzzler, but I realised that that particular asparagus crown was planted in a very, very (asparagus doesn’t tend to do so well in pots) big pot in the previous garden when the physalis were triffid-like. I don’t know how many years that seed was dormant. It could be anything from 3-5 years. It won’t mature in time to product fruit this year so I’ve put it in a pot and intend overwinter it in the house and see how it goes next year.

You can’t see from this side…
…but there was a young plant hiding in the asparagus.
It looked like this 5 weeks later

Therefore, I think it’s a wonderful resilient plant that self-seeds, but not too rampantly and can be perennial if kept warm enough and frost free.

Pollination

The flowers are hermaphrodite and easily pollinated by insects. I have never had to do anything to help it along. They are evidently self-fertile as I only have the one mature plant this year and it’s fruiting wonderfully. The plant has been merrily self-seeding and I haven’t noticed a change in the fruit. Therefore the seeds are true to the parent plant so this is a berry that you can save seeds from.

Diseases and pests

So far in my experiences with physalis – one year I had problems with two tone spider mites. The leaves developed a mottled yellow and brown appearance. If you do have these spider mites – when you look underneath the leaves with a microscope you’ll see these tiny mites with these two spots on their backs about the size of a fine grain of sand. They are very hard to get rid of. You’ll need to remove and destroy any leaves that are affected. We tried a spray with a few drops of rosemary oil in it. I think in the end we kept them at bay by removing leaves and spraying twice a couple of weeks apart. To be honest I can’t be certain how much the rosemary oil helped. It may have been the removal of about half of the leaves and dampening the plant that did it, as they thrive in hot, dry conditions.

Otherwise the plants haven’t had any issues. They seems very easy to care for.

Therefore this plant with the soft velvety leaves is a winner in my opinion. I’ll overwinter the random asparagus invader and maybe keep it in a pot to take in again next winter to see how long it’ll survive for. I’ll also keep seeds from a berry in case I want to grow them again and the unpredictability of the self seeding doesn’t go in my favour one year. I suspect it will remain a firm favourite with my little one and I won’t have to pay through the teeth to buy them in the supermarket.

They take so little care that if you’ve eaten the fruit before and are a fan, and you have a garden of any sorts, please please do give these a go… or… a grow! Tee hee.