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Some
Fun Plants For The Allotment!
During
some of the Allotment Committee meetings it was joked about how the
whole site was built on the side of a hill that was South facing and how
well Grape vines would grow on it. Well perhaps I take things that
people say too seriously, or maybe I am just ever optimistic, but when I
saw some Grape Vines on sale at a good price in a local Garden Centre, I
bought some. Really they were little more than rooted, hard wood
cuttings, but most of the pots on sale had 3 vines in with some only 2.
At only £3.50 a pot though, they seemed too good to miss, so I bought a
few pots, divided the plants up into individual pots and kept them a
week or two before planting out on the boundary of my plot. Hopefully,
in a few weeks they can have some short tree posts put in, for support
and ready for the training wires to go along. I suppose I know that the
grapes are going to be too sour for eating, but one or two plot holders
are already talking about having “Cheese and Wine Parties”.
Another
plant that caught my attention at a garden centre recently was a White
Mulberry tree. Mulberry trees do not, it seems, have tall trunks, but
branch out very low down making them grow more like a fruit bush. We are
allowed to plant fruit bushes, but not tall trees on the allotments, so,
I thought that I would buy it. What really swayed me was the fact that
it had a handful of ripe black, berries already hanging from its tiny
branches. The berries start to ripen red before turning black later and
will appear on the smallest of trees. In fact the Black Mulberry is even
smaller growing than the white, with trees, here in Great Britain, that
are hundreds of years old and still only 20 – 30 feet high. Mulberries
are not native but have been brought here since Roman times with King
James the first importing hundreds in an attempt to start a silk
industry in this country. Unfortunately he shipped over the Black trees
instead of the White Mulberry that the silk worms like to eat. Some
varieties are a bit tender and they are rarely sold in garden centres,
but like Fig Trees and the true Quince, they now seem to be offered for
sale a little more than they used to be. Also like the Fig, Mulberries
are said to have various medicinal qualities that include being a
laxative! At the moment my Mulberry is in a large pot on the yard at
home with some of its branches pegged down into another pot so that they
might root. I am hoping that by the time the Autumn comes, I will have
several small trees to plant on my allotment at the best time of year
for tree planting. If they do grow well and fruit on my plot next year
they will certainly be a talking point. We have a big, beefy policeman
on the Committee and I don’t know what his past-times normally
include, but his immediate comment when I told him about my new
acquisition was, “We will all be able to dance hand in hand round the
Mulberry Bush!”
 
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