SPOTLIGHT ON
You can start a fruit garden for free if you have a friend who will let you take some cuttings.
It’s not practical to grow tree fruit this way as they need to be grafted, but soft fruit bushes and canes, such as currants and blackberries or raspberries, below, and gooseberries are fine.
Take hardwood cuttings, right, as you would for shrubs. Cut off 8-10in lengths of stem, trim the base and remove the top two inches.
Now find a sunny, sheltered spot with well-drained soil that has previously been well cultivated. Make a slit trench by pushing a spade in halfway and waggling it backwards and forwards to leave a V shape. Sprinkle sharp sand down the gap and push the cuttings in four inches apart, leaving just the top inch showing above ground. Firm them with your foot along each side of the trench.
Keep the cuttings lightly watered and don’t get overexcited when leaves open out next spring because odds are they won’t be well rooted until autumn. That’s the time to dig them up and pot them individually, or plant them out in rows in the veg patch to grow. But don’t plant them in their final fruiting positions until they are roughly the same size as bought soft fruit plants.