In your fruit garden in June

Things to do in the fruit garden

Spread straw under strawberries


Fruit circle at
Garden Organic Ryton

• Apply netting over ripening soft fruits. A barrier will deter birds from feasting on forbidden fruit! Pick fruit to eat fresh, or for juicing, jellies and jams.

• June can be a dry month. See our top ten tips on how to save water in an organic garden. Give fruit bushes, canes and trees a good soak if the weather has been dry for a week or more as water stress can cause fruit to drop. Newly planted, and wall trained, fruit especially will need water. Apply up to 25 litres/sq m (4.5gall/sq yd) every ten days in dry periods. Water at the base of the plant. Mulch if you can to help conserve moisture in the ground.

• From June onwards, strawberry plants will start producing runners. These are produced by the main plant, on which miniature plants grow. If the runners are not removed the crop may be reduced. Leaving runners attached will sap the plant's energy.

  The detached runners can be rooted in pots of compost, ready for starting a new strawberry bed in late summer. If preferred, the runners, still attached to the plant can be pegged down on to the soil to root and then transplanted. This method of propagation may result in the parent plant producing smaller fruits.

  Strawberries can be mulched at this time of year to help retain water in the soil and prevent soil splash which may spoil the fruit.

• 
  A second year rhubarb crop

• Harvest rhubarb. However tempting, do not pull any rhubarb sticks in the first year of planting. Let the plant grow and establish a good healthy root system.

  During the rhubarb's second season, pull only a few sticks. In following years harvest frequently, but do not strip the plant. Always leave three or four sticks on the plant to mature. During the cropping season select the largest sticks, waiting for the leaves to fully open before pulling.

  Harvest rhubarb by gently pulling the stalk as low as possible to the base of the plant and at the same time twisting. The leaves can go on the compost heap - definitely don't eat them because they are poisonous.

• Loosely tie in strong new raspberry canes as they grow. To obtain the maximum yield of fruit it is a good idea to thin out the number of canes to approximately seven per stool. The excess should be dug up or pulled up with their roots, but not cut off at soil level.

• 
  Beautiful summer fruiting raspberries
  just waiting to be picked
  
  
  Ripening Tay berries in June

• Train in new shoots of blackberries and hybrid berries, such as tayberries and boysenberries. Train the young shoots to wires against a fence or wall in one direction and the older fruiting canes in the opposite direction. This method makes picking and pruning simple.
  

• Use a foliar spray of liquid seaweed extract to achieve fruit with enhanced colour and storage quality. Seaweed extract contains natural growth stimulants and a variety of trace elements. Besides improving the quality of your fruit the plants become stronger and healthier so are less susceptible to pest and disease attack. Liquid seaweed is available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue

Pruning

Top fruit

• Peaches and nectarines
  On wall trained peaches and nectarines rub out buds that are growing directly towards the wall. Tie in the selected shoots and thin the fruits.

• Cherries
  Fan trained cherries and plums should have any shoots growing inwards towards the wall removed. Badly placed shoots also need removing. Pinch back other lateral branches to five or six leaves and tie in.

• Grapes
  Remove the tips of laterals on grape vines three or four leaves beyond the developing fruit clusters. Any side shoots (sub-laterals) on the side shoots need to be pinched back to one or two leaves. Keep vines well trained or you will get a lot of lush growth at the expense of the fruit.

• Plums
  In June, shoots with at least 6 new leaves - pinch back to 6 leaves
  In early September - prune back those shoots to 3 leaves

Soft fruit

Prune red currants, white currants and gooseberries. Prune bushes and trained forms once the plants have stopped growing for the year, usually in late June.

Identify the leading shoot on each branch, and leave it alone. Prune all side shoots growing from the main branches back to 5 leaves.

Fruit thinning

Thin overcrowded fruit clusters

When conditions are favourable in the spring, fruit trees and bushes can set far more fruit than the plants can cope with. Plums require thinning quite early in the month otherwise a heavily laden branch may break under the weight as the fruit develops.

Consider thinning apples, pears, peaches, apricots and plums if the crop looks heavy. Thinning gives better sized fruit, helps ripening, reduces the tendency to biennial cropping, avoids branches breaking and promotes fruit bud formation for next year's crop. Remove diseased, damaged and distorted fruitlets first.

Top fruit

• Apples and pears
  To increase fruit size, thin within 6 weeks of petal fall, remember that the earlier the thinning is started the larger the remaining fruit will be. If larger fruit size is not your aim, thin after the 'June drop'. This natural process that takes place around June - when trees, of their own accord, will drop small, diseased and pest ridden fruits.

  Aim for 1 fruit per cluster, with fruit spaced 10-15cm (4-6in) apart. If fruit is sparse, leave 2 per cluster. Cooking apples, thin to 15-22cm (6-9in) apart.

• 
  A peach ready for picking
  
  
  Gooseberries ripening on the bush

• Plums and gages
  A plum can set so much fruit that its brittle branches may break under the weight of the crop. To prevent damage to the tree, thin the fruits in two stages. Firstly, when the fruits are beginning to form, remove damaged and diseased fruit. Then let the tree shed some of its crop. After this has happened a second thinning, usually mid-July can be done. You should ideally aim for a minimum of 4in (10cm) between fruits. Don't be tempted to leave more.

  Where thinning is not practical - on a large tree for example - prop up branches to support them if the crop is heavy.

• Thin fruits on wall trained peaches and nectarines
  Thinning is essential to get good quality fruit. When fruitlets are grape-sized, thin to one fruit per cluster. When walnut-sized - thin to 15cm (6in) apart.

• Thinning Soft fruit
  Gooseberries can be thinned too in order to achieve desert quality fruit. The thinnings can still be used for cooking although you may need to add a little sugar to reduce the tartness.

  
  
  

Weed watch

• Mulch trees and bushes with grass clippings to keep weeds at bay.

• Hoe off any young weeds as pests and disease can lurk in undergrowth. If this is done on a hot day it is less likely the weeds will re-root.

Pest & Disease Watch

• Spells of wet weather encourage the spread of Botrytis cinerea (grey mould), especially on strawberries. Inspect fruits regularly, removing any that are infected. Don't compost diseased fruits as fungal spores can be spread through the air. Ensure plenty of air circulates around the plants and keep developing fruit off the soil by putting a straw mulch underneath. This stops the soil being splashed on the fruits by rain, which can also spread the mould. It also has the added bonus of keeping the soil moist and aids ripening.

• 
  Gooseberry sawfly larvae

• Inspect gooseberries. Concentrating in the centre of the bush for larvae of gooseberry sawfly. Pick off and destroy.

• Check all fruit trees and bushes regularly for aphids.

  See our Aphid factsheet for more information.
  (Online access to factsheets requires members' password. Find out about becoming a Garden Organic member here.)

• Cut out apple twigs and leaves infected with powdery mildew.

  See our powdery mildew factsheet.
  (Online access to factsheets requires members' password. Find out about becoming a Garden Organic member here.)

• Look on apples and plums for faded, speckled leaves with a fine webbing on the surface. This indicates fruit tree red spider mite. Pick off and destroy the leaves if there are only a few. There are numerous predatory mites and insects in the garden that control them.

• 
  Codling moth pheromone traps
  available from the
  Organic Gardening catalogue
  
  
  Pear midge damage

• Continue hanging up codling moth and plum fruit moth traps. Codling moth larvae tunnel into small fruits, spoiling a lot of the flesh.

  See our codling moth factsheet.
  (Online access to factsheets requires members' password. Find out about becoming a Garden Organic member here.)

• Collect up and destroy all June drop fruitlets as these may be harbouring sawfly and pear midge larvae.

  See our pear midge factsheet.
  (Online access to factsheets requires members' password. Find out about becoming a Garden Organic member here.)

• Hoe off or pull out raspberry suckers. This will help reduce overcrowding and avoid fungal disease.

• Net soft fruit as they begin to ripen to avoid damage from birds

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