almonds

[oldjerry]

Anyone got any experience of growing almonds ?
Average garden,English Midlands,south facing wall. I've looked at Robjin,which I can get on Pixie (I like small rootstocks) but some site or other is pushing something French and late flowering called Madaline(anybody come across this?).
Lastly,other than nets,spraying cold water etc,how do you protect yours from late frosts,or aren't they such a big deal?

Thanks.

[Skippy]

I've got an almond tree although I can't really offer much in the way of advice. It's in the front garden of my house which is on the north side and near to the road. No idea of which specfic species.
To be honest I don't really do much with it to look after it and just let it get on with doing what it does. The trunk is about 6 inches across and apart from the occasionaly prune and feed all I do is pick the nuts. I did feed it a bag of bat droppings one year and the crop was good, this year however the crop has been on the small side. It crops before frosts and I don't cover the tree or anything. It's pretty much lost most of the leaves now but they'll be back next year .


Pete

[safronsue]

We have productive trees here and we get down to -20 so i guess your winters won't be an issue. good luck.

[oldjerry]

SS,It's not so much the low temps,but the probs of a late frost taking out the blossom,as this flowers early for a Prunus.
Skip,I'm encouraged,as I'm a bit South of you,so hopefully I'll get a bit of a crop. Thanks both..

Mind you here was I imagining RRE would announce that he was surrounded by Madalines(i.e. the almond not some French bird) and give fullsome cultivation details,followed by Contadina with a kickass receipe for Amorretto...................

[safronsue]

ah, that's why some years fail.

[contadina]

Madeleines and amaretto have got to be worth the risk of a late frost OJ although you'll need at least two trees (sweet almonds for the dolci and bitter almonds for the booze).

[oldjerry]

That's what I like about this site'I hadn't even realised there were sweet and bitter varieties,(I thought the latter were just unripe!).The only variety I've found available over here is this Robyn thing,plus references to this Madaline thing (french)as opposed to madelienes ,which is what I'm hoping to be over indulging on in a couple of years.Seems like I may have to look in some nurseries outside the UK, people don't seem to grow so many nuts here compared to say top fruit,considering their food value,quite surprising really.

[trampess]

I have about 20 almond trees in my "allotment" in Spain. The trees more or less do there own thing, in this climate. The trees do need pruning each but no feeding or watering. My main problem is finding ways to use the almonds. I'm trying almond butter which is very taste but labour intensive.

[demi]

We've got almond trees in our orchard and i was really looking forward to harvesting them at the end of the year there, but they didn't produce any almonds, very disappointing. But my husband says that happens sometimes. The previous year the squirrels got them.
We just leave the trees to grow and it gets below -20 here every winter. We prune them and give them some water during droughts in summer and that's it. Maybe we should fertilize them with something this year, but we don't have any bat droppings.

[Skippy]

I've only had bat droppings once Demi. They are said to be very rich in nutrients but aren't the easiest thing to come across. Bats are of course a protected species and it's illegal to disturbe them. I got the droppings when I worked on an old coach house near Worcester. The bats migrate and we had a "window" to repair the roof before they came back and to effect the repairs needed to shovel out the muck. We did have to put some of it back into the spaces to ensure the building still smelled of "home" to the bats when they returned.


Pete