Fully Fruitful!
This year we’re seeing a bumper crop of hedgerow fruits, and ripening seems to have come early. Coupled with the periodic mast year fruiting of oaks and beeches, it really is a fruitful autumn.
While I’ve been busy with my various engagement activities several people have voiced concern that early ripening of the haws, hips, sloes and holly berries might lead to food shortages for the birds later in the season, particularly if the old saying about ‘many haws, many snaws’ is correct. First of all, the abundant haws do not indicate a hard winter to come, but follow a warm dry spring when flowering was good and there were plenty of pollinators around.
In my experience, although blackberries and elderberries have been stripped out early, the other hedge fruits mentioned above will hang on quite happily until consumed. It really isn’t to the advantage of the plants to allow their fruit to drop uneaten – they rely on birds to transport their seed to areas away from the parent plant, where it will be deposited along with a healthy dollop of fertiliser, having passed through the gut of the bird. This year’s heavy crop means that there will be plenty to go round when the colder weather strikes and the winter thrushes (fieldfares, redwings and immigrant blackbirds) arrive to join our residents. Ivy berries ripen in late winter, providing a good source of food late in the season.
I’ve often noticed that bushes of seemingly tempting red berries can remain untouched for weeks – we have a cotoneaster in the garden with a splendid show of scarlet fruit, which is ignored despite the fruit being apparently ripe, until one day it will be stripped bare within 24 hours. Holly berries too will be untouched until the day before I want to harvest some for the Natural Christmas Decorations event, whereupon a mistle thrush will scoff the lot. Ripeness to our eyes is not the same as it is to a bird’s! Rosehips will remain on the briars, perfectly edible, well beyond the first frosts. I’ve used them successfully for rose hip syrup into January.
Having said that, and despite the durability of hedge fruits, I like to store windfall apples and crab apples in trays, so that if we do get a spell of harsh weather and snow in January and February I can throw the out to supplement the natural foods for the winter thrushes. These birds don’t eat seed mix, so a hand-out of fruit can really help. Of course, if food is unavailable they simply move on to where it is, but it gives me great pleasure to see these handsome visitors squabbling over apples in the garden for a while longer. Winter is also the best time of year to plant bare rooted trees, so perhaps you might think of adding some fruit-bearing natives to your garden – crab apples and rowans might even attract waxwings – and these small trees will be covered in springtime blossom for the bees too, adding life to your garden and helping out our beleaguered pollinators. Even if there’s enough fruit, there can never be too much!