Midshires Orchard Group

Hello all!

Hope you will allow us to become members, as we're just, just outside the area. 40-odd years ago we were in Warwickshire, before we were swallowed up by West Midlands! Worst thing ever, but that's another topic!!

We have got a Victorian walled garden, which doubles as a small plant nursery - when I get any customers!! For a few years now, we have been growing heritage veg for ourselves, but now want to try and add some fruit. There are 2 eating apples, a cooker and a mulberry already in the garden. The mulberry was on the map in 1892, and apples look almost as old! We will be trying to identify the apples later this year, as it's obviously going to be a good fruiting year for all of them!

We have started off with a couple of cherries and a quince, but there were originally: pears, apples, cherries, apricot, peach, medlar and fig in the garden. Eventually, we're hoping to get all replaced with 'suitable' old varieties.


Anyway, hope we're 'admitted'!!

Rosemary and Dave (Tamworth side of Sutton Coldfield)

Hi Rosemary and Dave

Welcome to the MSOG online forum! You are very welcome and of course we won't hold it against you that you now live 'out of area'! We are pleased to enjoy a much wider community than just in the 'Midshires' - so good to have you join in.

How lovely to have (a) a walled garden and (b) such an historic mulberry! I have been trying to persuade a two-year old grafted 'Senlac' Black Mulberry to grow, but it has had other ideas, so may now need to be replaced with another...

Are you going to replant the varieties that were in your garden before, or go for others? Whatever you choose to do, we at MSOG and the MSOG forum members will try to help you out with your endeavours, if we can.

Good luck and welcome aboard!

Claire

Hi there, and welcome.

Does your mulberry produce any decent fruit, or is just 'ornamental'.

How did the mulberry fair with the cold in the last years winter. If you ever decide to dig it out (heaven forbid) I would be interested in a couple of branches for grafting/budding purposes.

Do you know the varieties of the other fruit trees, you say that you are going to replace? as they may have an intrinsic value just for the fruit or as a pollinator.

A mulberry! How fantastic I've just bought a morus alba pendula. I know the whites aren't supposed to be so nice, but having eaten from the beautiful old weeping trees in the bishop of llandaffs herb garden in Cardiff, I live in hope. I'd love to hear more about your tree
This is possibly heretical of me, but when you change your trees for older varieties, bear in mind that some people, notably martin Crawford of the agroforestry research trust, suggest that you avoid local heritage varieties and go for ones from areas further south - the thinking being that climate change is significantly affecting chill times over winter so local heritage varieties may not fruit as well as they did. I would have thought this was especially relevant in the microclimate of a walled garden.

Tania