Growing sea buckthorn here at Devereux farm started in 2009. The concept was a trial to test whether commercial sea buckthorn varieties would grow in the UK.
The trial began with a few German and Finnish varieties; matured into sourcing several thousand plants of ten varieties from Siberia and finally establishing four varieties from Latvia.
The results have seen all the plants grow with vigour, but commercially not all have proved their worth. The saddest issue is that the Siberian varieties, which come with a lot of promise of larger berries; sweeter taste, high yield and easy of harvesting have not adjusted well to our climate. Progressively over the years their pollination period has moved earlier and earlier into the year. As wind pollinated plants it is crucial pollination happens when the weather can gently push the pollen around the orchard so the female plants can be take up enough available pollen to start to develop fruit. The first plants were established in 2012 and by 2017 they were mature. The site covered 3 hectares with 3500 plants of 10 varieties. The design of the site was again a trial. One section had mixed plant spacing of 12 plants each for four plant space trial widths – 0.8m/1m/1.5m and 2m. The tight spacing followed research in Siberia indicating it was possible to gain a very high yield from such a concept. There were 19 rows of 50 plants in this section. The rows widths were 3.0m / 3.5m and 4.0m widths.
In 2017 when the plants matured the whole orchard was covered in berries, which ripened at the end of June.
Unfortunately at that time we did not have the harvesting equipment to be able to benefit from harvesting all the berries. But the issue was that the trial had worked and the Siberian varieties would produce fruit. What had not been anticipated was that moving plants from the extreme climate of Siberia to the maritime climate of the English coast, resulted in the plants believing they were in a perpetual summer. In consequence the plants went dormant in October. The first buds started to break around New Year’s Day – January 1st. Pollination moved back progressively year by year to where it is now, being the beginning of March. This is when the weather is both wet and windy. A small amount of fruit sets, but this is enough to fee the local birds. The trial with Siberian varieties has to therefore conclude that unless Siberian varieties are grown in a controlled environment space, pollination will not be successful enough in the UK to provide a commercial crop. This may be seen almost within the context not of climate change, but what happens when imported plants have to adjust to a radically different climate.
As all varieties are imported the impact of climate becomes of interest.
The difference between the Siberian varieties and all the others is the different in ripening dates. The Siberian plants ripened early – in June. All the other varieties – german, Finnish and Latvian ripened for harvesting later in the year and have therefore been successful.
The Latvian varieties ( Sunny; Goldrain; Mary and Tatjana) are ready for harvesting in the third/fourth week of July. The German varieties are ready at the end of August, through to second week of September. All have proved successful.
Of the original six german varieties ( Hergo; Frugana; Dorana; Askola; Leikora and Habego ) the last two are the one’s I would favour most. The first three varieties do not tolerate the branch cutting process of harvesting – even to the extent it can kill the plant. Askola, the yield of berries is large but the berries are very small. This leaves leikora and habego as the favourites. Habego is also known as orange energy. The flavour of both are very good.
As the original german plants from 2009 are now large, I now tend to harvest plants every other year. The branches selected for cutting are taken on the basis as if one was pruning the plant to let in extra light into the crown or thinning the plant generally. The yield of Habego and leikora is spectacular this way. The berries are of average size.
Of the Latvian varieties – Sunny and Goldrain are my favourites. Sunny is a yellow variety with large berries. The latvian varieties ripen in Late July and are reliable and juicy. I expect around 3 to 4 kg per plant bearing in mind i harvest approx a third of the available crop each year to allow for a branch regrowth cycle to continue.
At harvest time the branches go into my cold store in an hour of harvesting. They are put through a simple seperation machine which removes the branches, seperating the leaf/berry and some small wood trash for further processing. The next stage is a conveyor based machine which removes the bulk of the leaf, some damaged berry and woody parts. The next stage is manual but fast, putting the berry/leaf/woody mix across a stainless steel 11mm mesh. This removes all the small woody trash/ leaf and small berry. The final stage then is very manual, but it works. The remaining berries are put into a box and I pick through them by eye to remove discoloured and damaged berries. Often in the freezing process berries are frozen together which results in them being dented and not a perfect berry shape. All these are removed, to end up with a final clean berry sample for customers. The process is manual but the machinery I use was bespoke designed and made and the scale and cost appropriate for this trial size of enterprise.
So to the conclusion – unfortunately time never stops and we all get older. The orchard keeps growing and customers keep coming back. My concern at the moment is the energy costs of running a cold store need to be met with investment in solar energy panels to reduce the environmental loading of the processing system. I hope that over the next two or three years I might find someone else to grow on the business.
To all my customers – thank you so much. I hope that the berries I send to you remain as frozen as possible in transit. It is not always easy especially when the ambient temperature gets higher in summer. Thank you again – and a happy New Year.
David