Friday 18 May 2012

Tropical Fruit?


Thursday was dull, cool with a little drizzle in the morning.

As I blogged yesterday, our strawberry flowers are black eyed meaning they’ve been frosted and won’t produce fruit. So what chance our more tropical fruit, peach, nectarine and kiwi? Of these 3 only our peach is outside and at the moment dare I say it, it looks like a few peaches may have set.
Our nectarine only arrived early this spring and since it was potted up it has remained in the greenhouse. Although it did produce some flowers it doesn't look as though these have set fruit but the tree itself is looking very healthy.
Finally to our kiwi which is also in the greenhouse. The tree is covered in flower buds and some of these are now starting to open. Pollination could be a problem as it’s inside but even in this cool weather the greenhouse windows or door is open for ventilation most days giving pollinating insects a chance to do their thing.
The kiwi spent last summer outside and in the good weather early on last summer it set plenty of fruits but these didn’t like the much cooler summer weather that followed. So this year the jury’s out as to whether it should spend summer outside or in the greenhouse. At the moment I think I favour the greenhouse.

4 comments:

  1. I bet you're pleased about the mistake made with your peach, it did well last year and here it is setting fruit again this year. We don't seem to have had the frosts that you have. I've got lots of flowers on the strawberries in the garden and there's no black centres so I may get an earlyish harvest.

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  2. Hopefully all our new strawberry flowers will be OK. Looks warmer for next week so maybe we've had the last of the frosts for a while.

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  3. I would really love to grow kiwis. Glad to hear they are budding. Aside from the ventilation from the windows and the door, do you use any greenhouse fans to keep the plants cool?

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  4. Hi Dan

    No we don't have any greenhouse fans. It's not normally a problem keeping the greenhouse cool more a problem of keeping it warm enough for the plants we have in it.

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