Garden Centre

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Mistletoe – a kissing crop

This year Britain has a massive mistletoe glut – and that’s good news for anybody who’s hoping to get romantic this Christmas! Good mistletoe harvests depend on mild winters and damp summers, so very few people actually desire the right weather to grow this strange parasitic plant, but given how much it costs, even in a glut year, you might want to try growing your own.

Traditionally mistletoe grows in orchards, and the two trees on which the average gardener might manage to produce their own crops are apple trees and limes.

If you want to grow mistletoe, don’t try planting your Christmas crop, because it won’t be ripe and therefore won’t germinate. The berries are actually mature in March and so you need to spot a suitable clump of the plant in a tree you can actually reach, and wait until spring to cut your berries. Bear in mind that birds like mistletoe too, and you might need to cover your clump to keep them off while it ripens.

You also need to take care when harvesting the berries, as they split easily and then the seeds inside harden, which makes germination much more difficult. And once you’ve cut your germinating specimen, remember that it is most likely to grow on the same species of tree as the original plant came from. Your tree also has to be at least fifteen years old, preferably twenty, and the branch you put your seeds on needs to be at least four inches in diameter.

It’s a really odd plant to grow as you need to cut some shallow grooves into the bark of the tree, then squeeze the sticky seeds out of the berries and insert them under the bark flaps which should be covered with fine net to keep the birds off. You need to get quite a few seeds into each branch, as you need both a male and a female plant for berry production and there’s no way of telling which seeds are which in advance.

Then be patient – as the seeds germinate and the mistletoe develops, you’ll see the branch swelling but it takes five years for a mistletoe clump to be big enough to set its own berries.

And a little known fact is that girls who refused a kiss under the mistletoe were said to be destined to remain single!

Labels: apple trees, mistletoe, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:21 AM

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