Mirabelles - when do they fruit in France?

Gardening
1

When is the mirabelle fruit likely to come out in South West France (Gironde - dept 33)?

We have a mirabelle tree that blossomed well this year. So I’m expecting a bumper crop.

Our fruit gets stolen year after year, even though we now have enclosed our garden. It’s not the birds because it goes suddenly overnight. One year, it was there on a Saturday evening. We woke up Sunday morning and it was gone. So we harvest the fruit early and let it ripen indoors.

However, I can’t for the life of me remember when it fruits. I am aiming to be here this year when it does and need to plan…

2

Varies according to the variety, can be end of June to beginning of September depending.

3

A flock of starlings can strip a tree in half an hour. :grin:

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4

It’s the jays that enjoy our mirabelles and a group of them can do a passing impression of a plague of locusts.

I’m told the only solution is to put up netting like the commercial growers do.

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5

We saw some shadowy shapes eating mirabelles once in the early hours. We thought they were badgers but later realised they may have been Coypu.

6

We had a huge Mirabelle that generated loads of blossom and fruit. Over 3 years we only got enough fruit for one pie :cry:. Our Mirabelle would have ripe fruit early June. I say ‘would have’ because here in April and May we tend to have regular very windy weather. So windy that it blew all the unripe fruit from the tree, most of which ended up in next doors garden or even further. In the end we chopped it down :open_mouth:. It was about 25 foot tall, too near the house and blocked off light to our patio area so it went.

7

You should get in touch with Attenborough - tree-climbing coypus and badgers are a rare phenomenon…

8

Our mirabelles are fruiting now, but probably won’t be ready to pick until July.

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9

:laughing: I should have said the shadowy shapes were eating the mirabelles off the ground.

I now think they were Coypu as last year after having fenced most of the garden, one got in and was having difficulty getting back out again and it was surprisingly big!

10

I lost all the blossom in those 2 nights of wind and frost. That was all it took. Same as last year.

11

You have my sympathy Karen. We lost all our apricots (again). The kaki is only now just putting out new leaf, the previous lot having been burnt off.
Cherries, the sour one is fruiting abundantly but the sweet ones only have a few and the blackbirds are already taking them, even though not fully ripe.

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12

Make sure you water the tree well, because otherwise the tree will not develop fruit or let the unripe fruit just go.
You can look in gardening books, but with the weather changes things have changed and need updating.

13

Can anyone give me an idea when the cherries in the sud manche and the Gironde will ripen please

14

Thank you Nigel

15

Again it depends on the variety. Mine (several trees of different varieties) have fruit over about 6 weeks.

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