Time to get Fruity

The garden may be quieter than usual at this time of year, and certainly not likely to be yielding vast quantities of crops, but this near dormant time is perfect for planting fruit.

You can grow fruit trees in surprisingly small spaces, training them to espaliers (so that they have several sets of horizontal arms), cordons (as single main stems grown at an angle), fans (with their branches trained in to a fan shape) or as step-overs, (trained so that they make a neat edging for a bed or border about 45cm or so above ground level).

You could also use a fruit tree to create a decorative and later a wonderfully productive arch. At this time of year fruit trees are great value because they are sold ‘bare root’, lifted from a field and not container grown. I find these establish particularly well and because you usually obtain them from a specialist supplier or nursery, the range of varieties available is second to none. You can either buy one year old ‘maidens’ and train these yourself, or if you want to save time, you can often buy trained or part trained forms.

When you are choosing fruit trees it’s essential to get them on the right rootstock as this determines the ultimate size and vigour of the tree. Apples are particularly complicated, but as a rule, for step-overs, cordons, dwarf bushes and trees in containers try the extremely dwarfing but somewhat tricky M27 – but beware weak varieties or any tree grown on this rootstock in a poor soil as it may well fail. For bush, cordon, espaliers and half-standard try the easier to look after dwarfing rootstock M26 and for a cordon or espalier on a poor soil, for arches and for bush trees try the semi-dwarfing MM106.

You will need to choose the varieties you grow so that they can pollinate each other (if there is no suitable pollinator in the vicinity you will not get fruit) and on the basis of the taste and texture of the fruit and how well it stores and so forth. If you have space, it is good to grow apples for cooking as well as eating, or look out for those described as ‘dual purpose’, meaning they make very passable cookers as well as dessert apples.

As well as tree fruits such as apples, pears and maybe even a medlar or a plum or gorgeous gage, you could also consider some delicious bush fruits. The great thing about these is that they take up even less space and again can often be trained into wacky shapes such as fan-trained or standard bushes, making them all the more ornamental and easier to fit into the smaller garden. Then there are raspberries – on my rather heavy and very alkaline soil I tend to stick to the autumn fruiting varieties such as Autumn Bliss and Joan J, but on freer draining and acidic soils you can try some of the more numerous summer fruiters too.

Bare root fruit trees, bushes and canes are generally available from about November through until early March, depending on the weather, so don’t delay, start ordering or better still, planting, today.

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