Fruit Ideas, Tips & Guides

The pomegranate is a native of Iran and Pakistan. The shrub or small tree bears bright red flowers and juicy, if seedy fruit. Even if placed in the sunniest, warmest part of the garden they will suffer in the UK but with global warming who knows.

There are over 7000 different varieties of apple tree including those classed as eaters, cookers, crab or cider apples. 10% of these are available from RHS plant finder recommended nurseries.

It is not a question of which name but Brambles and Blackberries should be thought of together as one is the fruit of the other.Looking carefully at this picture you can see young unopened buds at the top center with some flowers that have been pollinated and begun to show nascent green fruitlets which will turn into blackberries when they swell and ripen.

Good, firm, mild flavoured Brussels Sprouts are a heavy yielding crop that only need a bit of care and consideration. Here are our top tips.

Potato blight, also called late blight, is a destructive fungal disease that is caused by spores of Phytophthora infestans. Potato blight spores are spread on the wind and may also contaminate potato tubers in the soil. It can ruin a crop in 10-14 days and there is little that can be done to save an infected crop. It was the original cause of the Irish Potato Famine.

This £1 packet of supermarket potato tubers have just been harvested to cook as new potatoes tonight. The variety was Charlotte, they were chitted in February and planted out in a frost shelter in March.

Yesterday I ate a sharp, fresh Rhubarb crumble made from Rhubarb picked on my own patch and it was brilliant.

Here in Oxford, we tried sowing some Kale in the middle of August.

Get sowing for some winter greens and veg like Beetroot, Spring Cabbages, Lettuces, Spring Onions, Chicory, Fennel and Rocket.

March is a good time to feed your Pears, Plums, Greengages and Blackcurrants.

Autumn sunshine sets off the traffic lights in the vegetable plot. A low angle for the rays of sunshine creates an extra opportunity to appreciate this vegetable. I like the leaf texture and think Chard can look so colourful that I will grow some amongst the flowers for next year.

March 11th and today I have finished harvesting my Leeks from last year. St Davids day whose symbol is the Leek is celebrated on March 1st every year so I am a bit behind the times. I have also sown the 4th and last batch of this years seeds for indoor germination. I may try some direct into the ground in early April.

Crab apples can be used as food, for ornamental effect, to help pollination, or for the wood. The wild crab apple found individually in woods has green fruit turning golden in Autumn. Cultivated crab apples vary in habit and grow upto 10 feet. Fruiting this year looks like a bumper harvest after the wet weather earlier in the year.

If you feel Herbie, the plants not the films, then sniff out the comments below:

An apple a day is not possible if you only get an apple every other year and that is the fate of some trees. Biennial bearing or a high crop followed by virtually no crop is not the sort of apple production a gardener needs.

Sloes and damsons are in good supply this September in your local hedgerows. I have relied on my own blackberries this year but from the train window yesterday there were masses of plump black fruit for picking.

I have just finished eating a Fyffes banana grown in Costa Rica. They were certified by the Rainforest Alliance and were sold as ‘Ripe, snack size bananas’ and a very appropriate  name it was. In our fruit bowl we also have ‘organic Fairtrade bananas fro the Dominican Republic cutesy of the EEC at least until brexit by which time they will be well overripe.

Misshapen tomatoes are a bane this summer and the rot is really setting in early .

Umbels are far from humble when grown well. When grown badly like Hemlock they are poisonous, even fatal but many species such as carrots, parsnips and fennel are edible or even medicinal.

Feeling grouchy and ill-tempered then perhaps you should plant a crab apple and that way you won’t feel crabby much longer.

We need a rebellion against the extinction of the greengrocer but in the meantime it is a good time to use your garden productively. Late autumn in a great time to plant some fruit trees and canes. You can also use the cold months to plan and prepare your own vegetable crop production for the next year.

Our son is a staunch vegetarian and his Christmas present this year will have a herb theme. He has the space for many pots and some new raised beds as he develops his garden 200 miles south of our Yorkshire home. It is  bound to be warmer down there if not Mediterranean.

Take a new step in your garden this autumn by planting some step-over fruit trees.

A virus has struck my favourite raspberries and the leaves have gone mottled. The light lemon green could have been a sign of magnesium deficiency but that turns out to be wishful thinking on my part. One variety partially effected last year is now in full denial and full of virus (its not just raspberry flu either.) As can be seen below full symptoms of my raspberry virus are obvious.

Where space is limited or very limited there are still many ways to create a productive kitchen garden.

I have found a new commitment to growing and eating Brussels sprouts. From 3 or 4 plants last year I ate several hearty meals including a socially distanced Christmas (not because of any sprout side effects).

Purple sprouting broccoli is coming along nicely. It has been occupying the ground for quite some time and has a lax habit needing more space. The old sprout stalks are ready to be dug out (they are too firmly in the ground just to pull out). They take less space and produce more food per square yard than broccoli which is consistently good at our greengrocer. A tip for this years growing plans – more sprouts firmly planted and well staked.

It has taken 7 years to get a good crop of blueberries from my plants in a 12″ pot. See my earlier more detailed blueberry GTips from 2014.

Walled gardens make great spaces for your special kitchen garden. Traditionally associated with larger estates, country houses and stately homes many were designed to provide a continual supply of fresh fruit, flowers and vegetables for the ‘big house’. It is the micro climate that walled gardens induce thus creating the facility to grow more exotic fruit trees against walls or with the aide of heated glasshouses.

Are you looking for some light-hearted fun with a fruity theme? These fruit puns and fruit jokes are just pear-fect!

Are you keen on the idea of growing your own vegetables, but not really sure where to start? This list of ten easy to grow vegetables is a great first step on your grow your own journey.

Birds have already decimated my shadbushes (Amelanchier species), whose fruits I have also eaten on occasion (not bad). And there’s no competing against the birds and chipmunks for the lowbush blueberries.But with the baneberry (which has creamy April blooms, left) and with shrubby Daphne mezereum (fragrant purple flowers then, too) and some other showy creatures in their second glory right now, the fruit is poisonous to humans. The ba

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

AROUND THIS TIME OF SUMMER everyone wants to know why their cucumbers are misshapen or bitter (or absent!), or their zucchini has lots of flowers, but no courgettes…yet. This story provides the answers.

WHAT WE CALL STONE FRUITS all grow on trees in the genus Prunus, and have a hard, stony pit inside them (their seed), with fleshy fruit around it—unlike so-called pome fruits (see below).Apricots, cherries, nectarines, plums (and therefore prunes), and some interspecies hybrids of the above, like plumcots and pluots, are all stone fruits. So are peaches (like the ones in the 1940 harvesting photo by Lee Russell, in the Library of Congress archive, top, or just above in the print from Boston Public Library’s).And then there’s the trick-question one, the stone fruit you think of as a nut. What’s that?Almond, of course: Prunus dulcis.What’s a Pome Fruit?I KNOW, IT’S STONE FRUIT WEEK, but hey,