Poor plum pickings

The last two years have been good for beautiful billows of juicy plums. Masses and masses of both orchard fruits and wild ones. This year appears to be almost barren of these lovely sweet and juicy fruits. The question that I ask myself is, will the small quantity of fruit that are barely clinging to the branches manage to hold on long enough to ripen?

   This year’s harvest of plums – it doesn’t look as though I shall have many to eat!

I have forgotten which is the Greengage tree so I shall have to feel them to make sure that I do not waste any as Greengages are one of my most favourite of plums!! Greengages are one of the oldest varieties of plums they are probably the very sweetest and juiciest of all of the plum family. When ripe, their skin remains green in colour and their soft juicy flesh turns slightly yellow.

The Damson tree is totally barren this year!!!

Sadly, I have only had three edible cherries off the tree (these are also stone fruits).

Comment: Although the stone fruit harvest of 2013 is set to be a poor one, all of the berries and droops are plentiful. Many of the berries and droops are larger than their normal size and every one is both juicier and much sweeter than I have ever known them to be before.

*Droops are raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, cloudberries, etc.