Gardening: Plant fruit trees for summer,
Plant fruit trees over Christmas and prepare for a delicious summer
DO YOU need relief from festive shopping and canned carols? If so, here’s the perfect therapy: plant some trees. And if you treasure the notion of gathering crisp apples or juicy plums from your own garden, this is the moment to take your first step.
Homegrown fruit is delicious. The health police never stop banging on about its nutritional benefits — all those minerals and anti- oxidants and whatnot. And nothing beats the virtuous glow of feeding the family from your own garden.
To be fully self- sufficient, the average family would need an orchard, apple loft and a big deep freeze. So while you conjure up dreams of a fruity cornucopia, remember to keep both feet on the ground. In small spaces, fruit production is bound to be limited, but you can maximise yields in many ways.
Special pruning helps, especially if you have a wall or fence on which to train your trees, but you can grow a range of free-standing trees in patio pots or developed as cordons.
Despite limitations, you can produce delicious fruit from even the tiniest of spaces.
SOMETHING UNUSUAL
IF SPACE is limited, choose something special. You can buy Braeburn or Gala apples at any supermarket and homegrown ones won’t taste that much better.
But the juicy crunch of a fresh-plucked Spartan or syrupy lushness of a naturally ripened Oullins Gage plum cannot be bought.
You won’t find sun- warm, treacly figs in shops either. If you fancy those, grow your own or book a flight to Izmir.
Fruit needs a sheltered, sunny position with fertile soil. Apples, pears and plums are happy in the open, but peaches, apricots and figs yield better if trained on a warm south or west-facing wall.
Where space is restricted, you can grow cordon, espalier or fan-trained trees. Cordons are developed with single or paired stems and can be planted much closer together than with naturally branching trees.
That saves space, but it’s best to buy ready trained specimens and they’re not cheap — from £30 for single-stem trees.
You can grow most tree fruits in large pots. Make sure, when buying for containers, that you select varieties grafted to suitable rootstocks.
These should be named on the labels, but if you buy from specialist fruit nurseries, such as Reads ( readsnursery.co.uk) or Pomona Fruits ( pomonafruits.co.uk), they can advise. Remem- ber, too, that some fruit trees must cross-pollinate with other compatible varieties to fruit. If you’ve only room for a single tree, ensure it’s self-fertile.
The dark-red cherry Sweetheart is self-fertile, as is heavy-cropping Lapins and new variety Kordia. Solo plums include brick-red Victoria, bite- sized Opal and golden-skinned Oullins Gage.
FAN CLUB
FAN-TRAINING is best for stone fruit grown against a sheltering wall. Some, especially peaches and cherries, have decorative blossoms as well as delicious fruit.
I hope to plant the doughnutshaped, white-fleshed peach, Saturn, but if you prefer the traditional peach shape, Rochester is an old favourite.
Wall- ripened apricots are superb. Try Flavourcot which was developed for our chilly climate. If your wall is warm and sheltered, consider Orange Summer, whose rounded fruits keep beautifully on the tree and can be gathered as needed.
Espalier trees — trained with paired horizontal branches — also fruit more quickly if purchased ready-trained. You can grow them against a wall or free-standing to create a screen. They make charming boundaries for vegetable beds.
Stepover apples are T-shaped espaliers whose single pairs of horizontal limbs are knee-high. Dessert apple varieties that train well as espaliers include Egremont Russet and Spartan, which would pollinate the whopping cooker, Howgate Wonder.
No variety is better for coring, stuffing with dates and muscovado sugar and baking whole.