Plant now to savour later
Growing your own fruit doesn’t require huge effort, writes Gerry Daly, just a bit of planning
IT’S hard to beat home-grown fruit which, once established, can be harvested in autumn, stored though the winter, and enjoyed for months. Be warned, though, some types are easier to grow than others. So take into account your soil type and expertise before you choose what to grow.
Apples, pears, plums and damsons, for example, are relatively good for beginner gardeners, while cherries and greengages are possible but considerably more difficult to grow. Peaches can be grown in a greenhouse but are not successful outdoors, except possibly on a south-facing wall with polythene sheeting draped over them in spring.
One thing all fruit crops have in common, however, is the need for a good fruit-growing site and soil. Fruit crops do best in full open sunlight with some shelter. Avoid a low-lying frost pocket. The best fruit-growing soils and conditions are in the drier eastern half of the country. The ideal soil is a deep, fertile, free-draining, acidic loam. Away from the ideal, your chances of regular good crops are reduced. Damp heavy soil, for example, gives vigorous growth with reduced flowering and fruiting, and more risk of disease. The ground must be weed-free from the outset as good weed control is essential for best results.
Apples are by far the most popular fruit to grow at home, and the easiest. On a good site, a satisfactory crop can be expected in nine or 10 years out of 10. The best early fruiting variety is Discovery. Lord Lambourne, Red Devil, Elstar and Sunset are good varieties with disease resistance. Winston is hard to get but keeps until March and is very scab resistant. Bramley’s Seedling is still the best cooking variety and keeps well. Old varieties such as Sheep’s Snout or Irish Peach are again available.
Pears are more finicky than apples and less tolerant of poor conditions, the soil must be well-drained. The varieties usually grown are Conference, Concorde, Williams Bon Chretien and Doyenne du Comice. The first three are quite reliable about cropping, giving pears most years, the other is a pollinator for the others, and excellent quality. In good localities, expect pears eight or nine years out of 10.
Plums flower early and can suffer frost damage, especially in inland areas. The best variety is Victoria, most reliable and good flavour too, seven, maybe eight, years out of 10. Damsons can be grown on boundary hedges or in an orchard. The usual variety grown is Merryweather.
Cherries are tricky because birds usually get the fruit first, but it is possible to cover a walltrained tree with netting. Try Stella on the Colt rootstock, which is self-fertile. Cambridge Gage is the best of the gages and is partially self-fertile, but pollinates with Victoria plum.
The varieties I’ve mentioned here are the easiest, the most reliable and the most disease-resistant. Planting of all the kinds of fruit mentioned can be carried out in good conditions, once the soil is weed-free, and at any time of year from pots, but from now until March as bare-root trees.
CONSIDER YOUR ROOTSTOCK
All fruit trees are grown on a rootstock to reduce tree size and induce cropping at a younger age. Apple trees grown on M27 will develop to only 1.5m tall. M9 makes 2m tall trees while M26 reaches about 3m. Quince C is a dwarfing rootstock for pears. For small gardens, choose the dwarfing rootstocks.
CREATE A GOOD BUZZ
While the transfer of compatible pollen is essential for fruit to set, pollination is often more easily achieved than is thought, certainly in a suburban garden where the chances are nearby gardens will already have suitable pollinators. In the countryside, suitable pollinators may not be within the range of pollinating insects, and you might want to think about providing pollination.
SOURCE YOUR TREES AT…
Most garden centres stock fruit trees but for Irish heritage varieties of apple tree, try Irish Seed Savers (irishseedsavers. ie) in Co Clare who have planted 20 acres with native varieties. Future Forests (futureforests. net) in Cork is another source of heirloom varieties of tree, while English’s Fruit Nursery (englishsfruitnursery.ie) in Co Wexford stocks a wide variety. All three stockists deliver.