Exciting new garden items anyone?

[AlwaysAlba]

I’ve just bought a mulberry tree and am so excited - have always wanted to skip around one singing the nursery rhyme, though don’t think my teens will join me haha.
Has anyone else succumbed to their garden desires?

How exciting I love mulberries. I am going to ban myself buying anything else until I plant all the things I already have.

That’s a good idea @Geneticsbunny , hope you manage it! I’ve so much to go in, but digging new borders for them so they have to wait.

I love mulberries - but can't quite justify one myself. Enjoy yours!

I recently bought a several old varieties of apples, and a couple of old pears (jargonelle and beurre hardy), and I am so happy. I know it will be ages until they fruit much, but it feels so lovely to plant something that might (with a following wind) be here when I'm gone.

@SarahAndQuack love your name! My DD is obsessed with S & D.
I planted a couple of apples and a crabapple for extra pollination last autumn, completely get your hope. I’m lucky in that next door is a keen gardener too, she’s planted a couple of pears and plums and we will share all the crops. I have a gorgeous recipe for crabapple jelly.

@SarahAndQuack What old apple varieties have you? Mine are Brownlees Russet, Forge, King of the Pippins, Cornish Aromatic, Ashmead’s Kernel, Allington’s Pippin, and Herring’s Pippin.

Not plants but I got bargainous furniture in the middle of winter and is been stored away ready for spring. Can't wait to get that out.

I have replenished some borders and prepped a wildflower corner. We had 2 sunny days and now it's raining so I timed it well I think.

Oh, how lovely! I have tried to stick to local varieties or ones that will do well in the north, so I have Acklam Russet, Worcester Pearmain and Michaelmas Red (they're quite similar, I think), and Peasgood Nonsuch. I fancied Herring's Pippin. Are yours established trees? I would love to know whether Cornish Aromatic does well for you. I fancied that but wasn't sure it'd be very perfumed this far north.

I have a Worcester too. Not heard of Michaelmas Red or Acklam Russet. Herrings Pippin is gorgeous, huge apples,very spicy. We eat them as a dessert apple, but split them between two. My tree doesn't bear very well, 10lbs of so - but is improving. It has canker (my trees are a record of my MH over the years) - I should replace it, but I may not have many years left in this house, so I'm more concerned for the now than the future.

Cornish Aromatic - it is perfumed I'm not sure how perfumed it can get! Again a beautiful apple, really pretty in its colouring. My favourite. It's quite a dry apple but I prefer taste over sweetness and juice every time. I get about 25lbs

All the trees are about 30 years old. I planted them to grow over a pergola so as to have a tunnel of apple blossom with daffodils below. 30 years on I'm not sure how well it's worked I haven't always been on top of the pruning, and I chose too vigorous a rootstock to compensate for the frost pocket and the waterlogged ground. Turns out it wasn't needed!

If I were starting again, I would alter the proportions of early and late trees. Obvious when you think about it - Worcester Permain lasts about two weeks, Cornish Aromatic can be eaten for about 3 months. so clearly you need 6 late trees for every early one.

I’ve bought a Daphne ( thanks to this thread). Got it on Studio so not sure it will turn up alive. However it comes from a nursery and P&P was cheaper than ordering direct. I also saved 20% opening an account which I’ll pay off straight away. Fingers crossed.
I need a new shed too. They are ££££. Gulp.

Ooh, that really makes me want a Herring's Pippin! It sounds lovely. My issue is that my garden is relatively small (it's not quite a quarter acre and, for complicated reasons, we only own half of it, so I'm cautious about expensive purchases in the portion we rent). So most of my apples are going to be grown as trained trees, and I won't be expecting much fruit. What rootstock are yours on, out of interest? I've mostly gone for M106 because I want to train them and because we're northerly, but slightly wonder if I should have gone for something a bit less vigorous.

Michaelmas Red is (apparently) very like Worcester Pearmain; Acklam Russet I got because it's super-local to me, but it sounded nice too. I will have to see. Initially I wanted to match the ages of the varieties to the age of the house - it will have been tied cottages for farm workers, and there are old nails hammered into the house where I'm sure someone previously had trees trained against the walls.

Your tunnel of apples sounds gorgeous! Do you know Katherine Swift's 'The Morville Hours'? She describes something similar with pears - I keep wishing I had space for it.

Thank you for the advice about late vs. early trees. Yes, I'd not thought of that!

@SarahAndQuack I can’t remember the rootstock, it was 30 years ago looking at this guide it may even have been M25, but possibly MM106. I should definitely have gone for something less vigorous! Plus side is we eat our own fresh apples every day from August to March, the apart from buying Coxes while they’re still available, we don’t eat apples again till the Worcesters come in.

Herrings is another early, ripens just after the Worcesters and keeps about a month.

I think my garden is a fifth of an acre, judging from measuring distance on google maps. But could be less. It is a little crowded.

planting apples contemporaneous to the house is a lovely idea!

Have you ever come across the Vilmorin vegetable book - a facsimile of the Victorian edition, now out of print. They had so many vegetables in those days! Some of them we’re beginning to rediscover.

I have bought a dwarf mulberry to take to my new, fingers crossed it goes through.

@Theimpossiblegirl new furniture is very exciting!! My DH saved some logs when we were splitting wood for the fire in the winter, and surprised me with a lovely new bench.

@Marchintospring I’d love some Daphne, I hope it grows well for you.

@MereDintofPandiculation that book sounds lovely, I’ll have to find a copy.

@Seaitoverthere I hope the mulberry grows well. I went for a larger one but plan to take the top off at 3m.

@AlwaysAlba Thanks. I am loving the apple tree chat!
I have a weeping crab apple which is the closest my tiny rented new build plot will manage. It’s just about to bloom which is such an amazing sight.
I’ve also bought a mini solar foundation for my “pond”. That was lasts years acquisition. Someone was giving away a massive grinding stone from a granary. It makes a great mini pond. Hoping it will aerate the water so less slime.

Love the thread! This sunny weather plus long weekend is really getting me in the Gardening mood! :)

Not a new item per se, but I've finally bitten the bullet and arranged for my greenhouse to be tiled in some lovely traditional red quarry tiles (which I've been wanting to do for years).

I'm so excited but should probably reign it in - the poor tiler is almost done, but has been very patient with my many different questions. OH had to tell me to stop hovering and let the poor man get on with the job.

I'm really chuffed with the improvement so will make sure to give him a decent tip to make up for my many interruptions.

@MereDintofPandiculation - thanks for the recommendation! No, not heard of that book and it sounds fascinating. I am interested in old varieties of fruit and veg - I've got a friend who grew various early modern veg one year (I'm not sure if she continued the experiment) - I think it was skirret and things like that! Fun.

I love the idea of being able to eat your home-grown apples for months. I'm really hoping eventually that'll be us - but I'll need a lot of patience.

@Seaitoverthere - what are dwarf mulberries like? Do they fruit, or are they just ornamental (not that there's any 'just' about it really - I think mulberries are such a beautiful tree)?

@Marchintospring Isn't crab apple blossom gorgeous? It is one of my favourite things. Amazing for the bees, too.

@DeedlessIndeed - that sounds really fancy! I love the idea of a tiled greenhouse (I think I've only ever seen really utilitarian concrete floors).

I bought more plants today. I really wanted to but a Herrings Pippin but nowhere has it out of bare root season. So instead I have bought a Canary Bird rose, which I've been hankering after for a while, and some fancy euphorbia.

@SarahAndQuack I think they are supposed to fruit, I’ll let you know !

@SarahAndQuack There's a recent (within last 10 years) "patio mulberry". I was very tempted but then started reading reviews, and found a lot of people considered the fruit insipid. There were suggestions that it might even have been developed from the white mulberry rather than the black mulberry. It put me off the idea.

@SarahAndQuack Have you got a Euphorbia mellifera - it does exctly what the name says, scents the whole area with honey. It's a big beast, though, mine is a good 3m.

Ah, maybe the patio mulberry isn't for me!

I do have euphorbia mellifera, but I don't think it is very happy where I've put it. My mum and I bought them at the same time, and hers is spreading gorgeously - not three metres but easily more than 1 - and full of lovely flowers (it's also produced seedlings), whereas mine is five unhappy-looking stems. I may have to try again in a different spot.

I have 4, the original big one under the kitchen window, which I keep pruned to about 5ft, a seedling beside the kitchen window which is the 3m one, and a third in the Rosa rugosa hedge which I prune quite heavily to keep it within the width of the hedge. All these are on a S facing terrace, surrounding the table where we have our meals during the summer. Then I have a fourth, which self seeded itself half way down the garden under a mock orange, and that's looking quite sorry for itself. So I deduce that they like sun, and possibly reasonably good drainage.

And today I noticed with sinking heart that I have about 50 seedlings in the cracks of the paving. What am I going to do with them all?

Shame about the mulberry. I have it for my new front garden so not really about the fruit but it would have been nice. I need to get in and get a sense of the back garden then there will definitely be some fruit tree buying. I have a morello cherry, a plum , pear and apple in pots ready to go in plus a piece of rhubarb from 3 allotments ago.

Lots of apple orchards pretty locally and I’m involved in getting a community orchard off the ground so lots of tree shopping yet to come.

Viburnum Kilimanjaro- very excited! Got a biggish one for impact.

@Marchintospring oh wow, the grinding stone sounds amazing!

@DeedlessIndeed your greenhouse sounds gorgeous, I bet you’ll be smiling every time you look at it now.

@LexMitior oh lovely, viburnum are great.