More Trees

At some point I'm going to have to admit that it is time to stop buying trees. I mean, we have 1/6 of an acre here, with a sizable house on it, and eventually I will simply run out of new places to squeeze trees in.

In the meantime, I bought a few more fruit trees this week. I meant to earlier this season but got distracted by other projects.

I only (only!) bought three trees this year: a couple of dwarf plums and a new quince. They will all go out front, the quince in the smaller side of the upper part of the front, and the two plums along the streetscape. I'd be more concerned about pilfering if I were more fond of plums, but I'm quite content to only have a few each year and share them with the people who pass by. (This is not an invitation to come steal plums, by the way.)

The plums I got are a pair of European plums, Golden Transparent Plum and Parfumé de Septembre. They are both self-fertile, but will do better with each other than alone, I think. My experience with self-fertile trees is that they do OK alone, but for really spectacular results you need the nearby cross-pollinator.

(Which reminds me, I must remember to get another cherry to graft onto my Lambert to pollinate it, because it blooms out of synch with the other two and has never produced any fruit at all.)

The quince we got to replace our old fireblighted quince is Ekmek, which is the Turkish word for bread. Ekmek is a Western Turkish quince, medium sized and sweet for a quince. The old quince was Havran, another Turkish variety, extremely large and prone to nearly killing you by dropping a five-pound quince on your head as you weeded under it. I'm looking forward to trying the new variety.

I ordered from Raintree Nursery (where the links above go), so I got some free raspberries and strawberry plants as well, and on impulse I threw in some Orchard Mason bees, so we can go all-out and have a beefest in the garden this year. Not that I lack for pollinators; my project of attracting native bees has been very successful, plus there are several local beekeepers whose girls come hang out in my garden all summer long. But you know. I always meant to order some Orchard Mason bees and never got around to it until it was too late in the season.

posted by ayse on 12/27/11