shock horror
During a random wander in the garden this afternoon, I noticed with utter amazement that my Oullins Golden Gage tree has borne fruit. The tree in question is planted against a tall south-west facing wall and for nine years has done sod all.This year it has one solitary perfect fruit, after all this time. I hope it tastes good, or it may be firewood time for the wretched plant.
I think plums are the most sublime fruits; the debased wooden tasteless things that are sold in the supermarkets bear no relation to the reality. On the other hand, they are fickle, stroppy trees producing branch breaking crops one year, nothing the next.
I guess this applies in spades to the older varieties, the qualities that give them value to the consumer: flavour, identity, idiosyncracy, have been replaced by the supermarket mantra of product recognition, shelf life and transportability.
There is no way that a fruit farmer can manage his business growing rare fruits, if the tree has a hissy fit and does nothing for a couple of years, he might go out of business.
My local farmers market (hooray for farmer markets!), has an apple seller who is strictly seasonal, among the varieties he sells is a cooker called Cow Snout which I love, I've been unable to identify the tree at Brogdale (national apple collection), and he tells me that he has just the one tree, so maybe I shouldn't chop down my Oullins Golden Gage just yet, it may surprise me.
posted by Lampy @ 7/30/2005 08:48:00 pm
2 Comments:
There are two fruits, both perfect, maybe it responds to criticism?
two weeks down the line and it has to be said that it was a very superior fruit indeed, and for some reason ignored by wasps and birds. Maybe next year it will do some more, now that it's got the idea.
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