Tell me about quinces please

[didireallysaythat]

Dear wise ones, I'm looking for advice on a quince. I can't tell yet it's it's a single tree or multi stemmed shrunk as it grows out of a 9 foot evergreen hedge and through a bamboo hedge (both of which have to go, but not without a struggle). The quince is currently flowering, nice dark pink flowers, no leaves yet. I think we had one or two fruit last year.

I'd like to remove the hedge and bamboo but retain the quince (not necessarily for the fruit). Does quince take to hard pruning ? I've hacked branches off it and it responds with more, but if and when I find it's trunk(s) I suspect I'll find it had no formative pruning early on its life (if the rest of the garden is anything to go by). I'd like to know if I stand a chance of reshaping it. If I don't, I might be less careful when removing the rest of the vegetation swamping it.

[JT05]

I've hacked back an overgrown quince, in the past. It didn't come to any harm, but took a couple of years to get back to a good shape. I've seem them used as a hedge and clipped to a square shape.
Do the pruning as soon as it has flowered, next years flowers are on this years growth.

[ppeatfruit]

Lucky you, I tried ,and failed, to grow a quince tree. I love them and cook with them in the season. Obviously I buy them in a shop! The best book for recipes for really EASY quince cooking is Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking.

[didireallysaythat]

Right. I might just go crazy and hack the bamboo down so i can see what's what. I do like a bonfire and i need to hack my​ neighbours off right bowman

[SeaRabbit]

From what you say you have a Japonica quince, Chaenomeles japonica, the fruit of which are small and can used to make jelly. This tastes a bit like it's made from true quince, Cydonia oblonga, which is a relation. The Chaenomeles fruits are too small for anything else but jelly, really. The fruits of Cydonia can be huge, and can be cooked in all sorts of ways. Both have lovely flowers.

[didireallysaythat]

Thanks searabbit I think you might be right. If doesn't have thorns but the flowers look right I think.

[ppeatfruit]

Yes it's a chaenomeles quince, their fruits are edible but not like the cydonia ones!

I'd trim it back IIWY. Maybe take some cuttings.

[dementedma]

I have a quince in the garden and hate it. It has wicked thorns and snarls up other plants in my admittedly overgrown garden. It produces yellowy green lumps which I presume are fruit?

[ppeatfruit]

Aaah demented You don't have an "overgrown" garden, you have a 'wildlife' haven which is environmentally friendly!

I have the same and the neurotic locals don't like it, but I don't care I saw my first bumble bee today YAAY !

[dementedma]

I love you ppeat. I hate gardening and regimented gardens so my garden is a wildlife haven. Tis year I decided not to waste money on bedding plants for the pots and have down them all with a wildflower mix. I will do the same in the bare patches in the beds but the slugs will probably eat the seedlings as they come up.

[ppeatfruit]

Yup, each winter I just put the same bulbs out in the same pots as last year, I keep them in a light shed with no door (no changing of earth). I feed them leftover coffee and tea mixed with water and they love it! In the summer I do the same with pelargoniums (although the frost have killed some this year, I like buying them new sometimes).

I have an organic wildlife friendly garden and the birds have really colonised it in the years we've been here. I let them eat the cherries, I have fruit trees and herbs, not veg.

[choccyp1g]

I've got a quince just like OPs one, well actually it has its roots next door, but all the plant grows on my side.
Last year I never bothered to pick up the fruit where it fell, thinking the birds might like them.
They didn't, and now I have found the shrivelled fruits with baby seedlings growing out of them. I'm quite excited at the thought of growing a new quince all of my own.