Less conventional Fruit.

[Pattree]

Obviously the cost of cultures and harvesting will count for a lot. There used to be a pick your own gooseberry crop just up the road when we first moved here forty odd years ago. I think they were having a laugh as well as extending their PYO strawberry season. The problem with commercial gooseberries the weeding as much as the harvesting.

 

[demographic]

I'm familiar with the song.

Obscure fruit maybe a better term.

Its strange how our fruits and veg are limited to a certain range offered by supermarkets lead by I guess our farming and consumer led purchasing.

There's a bloke on Youtube who goes round the world (or getting it sent to his home) tasting weird fruit. Fairly interesting chanel.
Its called Weird Explorer.
Clicky here.

 

[Kirsty]

I have a goldengage and for the first time since planting it fruited, producing a grand total of three gages, so delicious, I hope for many more in the future! All my trees are young and this year the apples had no fruit, mostly due to gales and salt spray when they were pollinating, and then a marauding hind took advantage of a couple of lax nights with the electric fence and knocked off all the baby apples while stripping leaves from the only two that were productive. I'm very sad about that, I was particularly looking forward to the beautifully coloured and flavoured Devonshire Quarrenden, fingers crossed for a favourable weather window next spring. The raspberries and gooseberries on the other hand produced a heavy crop, maybe having had a seaweed mulch pleased them.
I will be following this thread with interest because I plan to make a new fruit bed on the area where I tried cut flowers this summer. I fancy some of those cultivated blackberries - the wild harvest is hit and miss this season, a lot of very small fruit which the dog nonetheless insists I pick for her. Would be interested to know if anyone has tried Silverberry, or Juneberry.

 

[TeeDee]

Ref Mulberry - I noticed one in an estate garden the other day and was impressed by the size and volume of the fruit it produced.

Are they difficult to grow ? Doesn't seem to be commonly grown ?

 

[Astrochicken]

Honeyberry are possible, although they can be a bit finicky. The berries are nice little things, and are one of the earlier fruiting bushes, so help spread out the harvest.

Physalis are another option, they grow well from seed and the fruit are visually stunning in their little lanterns.

We used to have a mulberry, but it was pretty slow growing despite being in ideal conditions - I think in the end we found that it's a long-term investment as I don't think it's a huge fruiter in the early years. We used to live near to a big old house that had been made open to the public, which had a huge mulberry in it, and when the fruit was out it was so loaded it practically rained fruit on you when you went to pick any.

 

[Broch]

Ref Mulberry - I noticed one in an estate garden the other day and was impressed by the size and volume of the fruit it produced.

Are they difficult to grow ? Doesn't seem to be commonly grown ?

There are fantastic examples in St Fagans Museum gardens of old (Black) Mulberry. For years I thought Mulberry trees must be prone to being blown over by the wind, and then an old estate gardener told me that the saplings were planted at an angle so the tree grew at an angle to the ground enabling the fruit to be easily picked - I have not, personally, seen an erect Mulberry tree!

 

[TeeDee]

There are fantastic examples in St Fagans Museum gardens of old (Black) Mulberry. For years I thought Mulberry trees must be prone to being blown over by the wind, and then an old estate gardener told me that the saplings were planted at an angle so the tree grew at an angle to the ground enabling the fruit to be easily picked - I have not, personally, seen an erect Mulberry tree!

Do they take a long time to become fully mature ? Which maybe why I'm only noticing them at country estates and not the local allotment.

 

[Broch]

Yes, they are relatively slow growing - although young trees can look old because they grow twisted and gnarled.

 

[demographic]

Last year whilst on my local dog walking circuit I spotted an apple tree.
Had a taste of its (under ripe at the time) apples and found they to be particularly hard with kind of oarse flest and insipid in flavour. That seemed a bit odd as most under ripe apples are pretty tart.
Anyway, not to be deterred I kept trying them every once in a while and eventually they ripened to soft flesh with a pear flavour.

So I hit the internet to find out if apples and pears can be hybridised.
I'm not 100% positive but I reckon they're Papples. The tree isn't that big, maybe ten years old or so.

No fruit on the tree this year as there was a sustained dry period round about when it would have been flowering.
Still not a bad find on a scratty bit of waste ground on an old marshaling yard/siding.

 

[Pattree]

Some of the Russet apples have a pear sort of flavour, particularly Merton Russet. They also have a grainy texture to the flesh.

 

[Kadushu]

Someone found an osage tree and brought a fruit to ask me what it was. Incidentally it's related to mulberry and both have a similar yellow wood. I made a mallet with mulberry wood because it's bloomin hard!
Has anyone mentioned wineberry yet? I have a couple of those. Think small glossy fruit shaped like a blackberry but red and very little flavour. I also have thimbleberry which is a bit like raspberry with the flavour cranked up to 11.