This Week in the Garden: Inspect homegrown fruit

If you put aside stores of homegrown fruit earlier in the autumn, then now’s a good time to inspect them, carefully removing and using any that are showing signs of bruising or decay, as otherwise rot will quickly spread to the rest of the fruit.

A word on staking trees: I often come across trees that have been laboriously staked using ugly thick wooden posts and strong plastic tree ties, and then utterly forgotten about; the awful result is that as the tree matures and its trunk swells and thickens, the plastic tree tie starts to act as as a sort of garrote, slowly killing the tree by girdling its bark. What makes this worse is the fact that the tree often didn’t have to be staked in the first place. For example, current research suggests that young trees (up to two metres tall) generally establish better when not staked, especially on windy sites.

With larger specimens, use only short stakes (30cm above ground), positioning them to allow gentle movement (this prevents chafing/ damage to the bark), and remove after about a year.

If you can’t bear the thought of going without fresh herbs this winter yet baulk at the cost of buying them, then consider potting a few plants on for growing under cover in a glasshouse/ polytunnel/sunny porch/even under a cloche. Mint, parsley, chives, chervil and even coriander can all be grown this way. Just bear in mind that growth levels are naturally much slower than they would be in summer, so harvest only small amounts at a time.

DATES FOR THE DIARY

24th November (8pm), Foxrock Parish Pastoral Centre, Kill Lane, Dublin 18, Exciting Annuals, a lecture by Rachel Darlington, gardener and columnist with The Irish Garden on behalf of Foxrock & District Garden Club

(see

[ foxrockgardenclub.com ]

)