Peach John Wingfield 
flowering Late October

Tactics for later blooms
The delaying tactics started with date of rooting - the cuttings were inserted on 1st April using a fairly large plug tray and were kept in this tray for approximately one month. The next move was into another cell tray, this time a four cell tray equivalent in size to a half standard seed tray, for a further five weeks.

The next move was into final pots, 10 inch clay pots in this case. As you can see from the pictures below the final pots were not filled completely, this is to allow for two 'top dressings' of compost as the season progresses.

The idea in the early stages is to root later, restrict growth, reduce feed and allow a natural break to encourage the flowering laterals.

Compost mix
The compost used for the early stages is three parts soilless multi-purpose compost plus one part John Innes 2.

For final potting I re-used multi-purpose compost from last years early pots plus soil from my garden (3 parts to one part), to which I added 5 ounces of Vitax Q4 and three ounces of DCM Antagon per bushel (or 8 gallons in 'old money').

Stopping
As mentioned above, rather than stop the plants I have decided to allow them to break naturally and let them initiate the flowering laterals on their own terms. When this has happens I will select flowering laterals well down the stem from the break bud to avoid the possibility of early buds on short laterals which can occur when a plant is allowed to form a natural break bud. This also means I will select the flowering laterals from part of the stem that is ripe and quite hard so hopefully lateral development will be slower than laterals selected from the soft part of the stem near the break bud.

Next Stages ...
I hope to chart the progress of Lates through a series of short video clips - Click the 'Lates Videos 2009' link in the Library. 

Date this page last updated: 14th December 2009

John Wingfield sports flowering under the early covers. 
These blooms were protected with bloom frames and greaseproof bags throughout their development

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