The Easy Fruit Garden E-Book

Clare Matthews

• Herausgeber: IMM Lifestyle Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 276

Beschreibung

Getting started on growing your own fruit can seem daunting – as appealing as the thought may be - and many people are put off by a lack of knowledge and time. This no-nonsense book sets out to overcome these problems. With clear practical instructions and inspirational pictures, Clare Matthews demystifies the growing of fruit and shows that with the right approach, it can be done successfully on weekends or slotted into a busy week.The book is packed with practical advice and shortcuts, from planning what to grow and companion planting to dealing with pests and diseases and no-dig gardening. Soft fruit, tree fruit, nuts and other fruit are all covered. The author explains simple short cuts, suggests unusual low maintenance strategies, and promotes a relaxed, robust attitude to growing-your-own that really works.The beautiful photographs are by the acclaimed garden photographer Clive Nichols in Clare Matthew's own weekend fruit garden, where the principles promoted in this book have been tried, tested and proven. Filled with sound horticultural advice, the book is essential reading for time-poor gardeners who want to achieve maximum yields from their fruit gardens with minimum effort.

Leseprobe

Published in 2012 by New Holland Publishers (UK) LtdLondon • Cape Town • Sydney • Auckland

www.newhollandpublishers.com

Garfield House, 86–88 Edgware Road, London W2 2EA,United Kingdom

80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

Unit 1, 66 Gibbes Street, Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia

218 Lake Road, Northcote, Auckland, New Zealand

Text copyright © 2012 Clare MatthewsCopyright © 2012 New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd

Clare Matthews has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 60765 196 3

Commissioning editor: Emma PattisonDesigner: Geoff BorinSpecial photography: Clive NicholsProduction controller: Laurence Poos

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Reproduction by Modern Age Repro House Ltd, Hong KongPrinted and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd

contents

introduction

why grow your own fruit?

planning and design

planning

design

preparation

where to grow fruit

what to grow

soft fruit

tree fruit

nuts

other fruits

almost wild

how to grow

planting

pruning

mulch

garden compost

watering

weeding

natural defences

companion planting

pests and diseases

fruit garden timetable

storing fruit

tools

jargon buster

index

acknowledgements

picture credits

introduction

I have a passion for growing my own food. I am unashamedly evangelical about how wonderful and easy the ‘grow your own’ experience can be if kept simple and expectations reasonable. I firmly believe that if you spend any time at all tending your garden you could be growing at least a couple of types of fruit, as most fruiting plants are no more challenging to grow than run-of-the mill shrubs.

I first grew fruit in my vegetable patch and it worked really well. The fruiting plants were a permanent, undemanding part of the garden that produced hefty harvests of succulent berries. When I moved house and set about planning a new productive garden, I realized I could grow a great deal more fruit without much more work so long as I used all the tricks I had learned from my first veg plot.

Most fruiting plants are long-lived and the maintenance is minimal. I liked the idea of picking more of my own organically-grown fruit. It is a healthy option enjoyed by the whole family in puddings, preserves and, best of all, straight from the plant.

My fruit garden has proved incredibly easy to manage, though its construction stretched over a number of months as I gradually filled beds, planted and added my finishing touches. This initial flurry of effort definitely paid off. It is a marvellous place to spend time and now I can look forward to literally years and years of fabulous fruit.

This book concentrates on presenting just what you really need to know about growing your own fruit, and the easiest ways to get a bountiful harvest. Challenging, time consuming horticultural techniques are ignored in favour of describing just the bare essentials, sensible short cuts and simplest routes to tasty home grown fruit.

My hope is to give everyone enough confidence to embark upon growing at least some fruit and experience the very real delight of growing your own. Good luck!

Clare Matthews

why grow your own fruit?

Home-grown fruit is delicious, nutritious and inexpensive to produce. It’s no more difficult to grow than many ornamental plants, and a great deal easier than others. Some fruits really cannot be bought in anything like the superb condition you can experience if you grow them yourselves. ‘Home-grown taste’ is a phase often bandied about, but it is just as true of fruit as it is of veg. There is an intensity and freshness to the taste of fruit you have grown yourself that is really very special. (I have often wondered if the satisfaction of knowing you produced the crop isn’t flavour enhancing.) You know how it has been grown. It will be free of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, unless you choose to use them and then you will know they have been applied responsibly. Dedicated fruit gardens can be beautiful if you chose to grow your fruit that way, or productive trees and bushes can successfully be part of the planting in a family garden. Even if you only have a balcony or small outdoor space, you can still grow your own fruit in pots.

Children find growing fruit even more alluring than growing veg, often grazing their way through what would be punnets full of vitamin packed raspberries, blueberries and strawberries as they walk by the plants. Fruits that are expensive to buy are a breeze to grow. The abundance can be staggering and everyone can indulge themselves.

the ground rules

Grow what you enjoy eating – there is an amazing array of fruits available. There are new or rediscovered fruits that often become the latest ‘thing’ to grow. I have tried many but none have matched up to my old favourites.

Choose plants that are suited to your environment and circumstances. Doing battle with nature is a relentless, exhausting task, so make canny choices in what you grow. For example, if you suffer from late frosts, avoid varieties with blossom that might be damaged. Likewise if you live in cold area, there is no point devoting space and time to trying to grow melons or passion fruit outside. If you are unlikely to get around to pruning, don’t try to grow fan-trained and espalier trees.

Select vigorous cultivars that have good resistance to pests and diseases. There are cultivars that just require more pampering than others to give their best, and are likely to be a martyr to every kind of pest and disease going. Not only is this time consuming to deal with, it will limit the harvest and is generally irksome and disappointing. Much easier to grow the toughies – the stalwarts that will grow well, have some disease resistance and will shrug off pests yet still produce a fantastic harvest of delicious fruit.

Growing your own fruit is wonderfully rewarding, and the bushes or trees can be decorative, too.

This greenhouse is dedicated to growing melons and watermelons.

Plant well. With any luck most fruit bushes will be delivering up their bounty for at least 10 years, and fruit and nut trees for tens and even hundreds of years, so it is definitely worthwhile ensuring they are planted into the best soil you can provide, in the right way and in the right place.

Take it slowly. Though growing fruit is far less time consuming than veg, it is still best to plan things at a manageable pace. If growing fruit is a new venture there is no problem in having big dreams if you take things in manageable chunks. Sitting with a nursery catalogue in summer and enthusiastically ordering several of everything will leave you with hours of work to build and prepare beds, if you are starting from scratch, before the parcels of bareroot plants start arriving in autumn. Planning will mean you start with a good idea of just how much time and resources you have to invest.

Do what is essential to get a crop. There are many wonderful, beautiful and interesting things you can do in the fruit garden – train and bend trees into intricate patterns, graft several cultivars of fruit onto one root stock, or grow trees from seed. They are not theoretically beyond anyone willing to take the trouble, but all take patience, skill and a significant chunk of time are not worthwhile for the time-poor gardener who just wants the joy of eating good fruit straight from the garden.

the bare essentials

• Water young plants in dry weather until they are well established.

• Feed all bushes, plants, canes and young trees with an all-purpose, organic fertilizer in early spring.

• Apply a mulch of good garden compost or well-rotted farmyard manure around all bushes, canes and young trees in early spring.

• Prune if essential.

• Use paper mulches, grass clippings, companion plants or other organic mulch to keep soil covered and limit weeds.

• Use a seaweed liquid feed as a foliar spray if a plant looks as if it needs a bit of a boost, or is weakened by pests or disease.

planning and design

Whatever size your garden and however little time you have, there is a way you can grow fruit. If you have plenty of space, you could set out an area dedicated to growing fruit. But even a small corner can yield plenty of tasty fruit if the type of fruit is chosen wisely. In tiny plots or paved yards many fruit bushes will thrive in pots, straw bales or grow bags.

planning

how and what to grow

Fruit bushes can be productive for around 10 years, possibly 15. Fruit trees may be productive for a hundred years or more, and they have the potential to provide plenty of delicious food, bursting with health-promoting vitamins and chemicals, so it is just good sense to plan what to grow and where to grow it carefully. Thought and effort put in at the planning stage will definitely make life easier as plants will be well matched to your needs, and the space in which you choose to grow them. These are the two key areas to look at: what to grow and where to grow it. The two are obviously inextricably linked, but it makes sense to start with what to grow, purely because there is no point whatsoever in growing fruit you don’t want to eat (unless it is to attract wildlife into your patch, but that is a for a different book).

Start with a wishlist of what you would like to grow, things you and you family love to eat most, or fruit you would like to make preserves with. Next, look at the space you have available. Are you planning a large fruit garden, pots on the terrace or balcony, or simply covering a stretch of wall? Wandering around an established garden with fresh eyes can often reveal opportunities as yet unthought of.

At this stage it will probably help to make a list or draw out a plan of the areas you have available for planting. A scale plan is best if you are planning a large formal fruit garden, while a quick sketch of the garden with potential locations might suffice for those slotting fruit into existing beds. Now start assigning your wishlist plants to the space you have available.

For those who are short of space, container growing can generate some reasonable harvests.

considerations

When planning your fruit garden it is worth considering the following:

• The height and spread of the plant, and the spacing if you intend to plant in rows.

• Each plant’s preferred growing conditions.

• The likely annual yield once the plants are established. There is little point planting 10 gooseberry bushes, for example, which might yield a whopping 40 kg (88 lb) of fruit and take up 12 m (40 ft) of growing space, when all you want is enough gooseberries for a few pies!

• How long you will wait for a harvest. Growing fruit is fun and, although there is something to be said for the intense satisfaction of savouring the fruit from a tree you have nurtured for, say, five years, getting at least some rewards the first year of cultivation is enormously encouraging and exciting. It may be best to have some plants which provide almost instant gratification amongst the longer-term propositions.

• The amount of work required to grow each plant and the level of care each plant requires. There is no point filling your space with demanding prima donnas, with blossom that needs protecting from frost, who require an exacting pruning regime to fruit well and weekly feeding, if you know you don’t have the time to devote to them.

• Look at the scale of the whole project you have in mind. Can you easily manage that number of plants? In many ways the first year of the fruit tree or bush is the most demanding. The planting areas need preparing, planting needs to be done and the plants require regular watering while they establish. Planting a truck load of plants in one hit may seem like a good idea, but it may pay to split the planting over two years so the plants get reasonable care and growing your own fruit remains enjoyable rather than a chore. Once the first year is over the care required is minimal.

When planning your garden do not forget vital, practical elements such as the compost bin.

which fruits to grow where

Below are some lists you may find useful when planning how and what to grow. This information is also given in the detailed directory entries for each fruit on pages 54–140, but it is here as well to make planning easy.

the easiest fruits

• Autumn raspberries

• Summer fruiting raspberries

• Alpine strawberries

• Japanese wine berries

• Rhubarb (not a fruit, but a ‘culinary fruit’)

• Blackberries

• Gooseberries

• Apples

• Hazels

• Walnuts

the most difficult fruits

• Peaches

• Almonds

• Fan trained stone fruit

• Restrictively trained fruit trees

These succulent ‘Autumn Bliss’ raspberries are amongst the easiest and tastiest fruits you can grow. Add a layer of mulch in early spring and cut the whole plant to the ground in winter.

To enjoy plenty of peaches like this from your garden, conditions will have to be just right and your pruning spot on.

Cleverly trained fruit trees are delightful but the work, knowledge and foresight required to create these magnificent shapes and then maintain them is probably best left to the enthusiast and professional, not the relaxed time-poor gardener.

fruit to grow up sunny walls and fences

• Kiwi

• Summer raspberries

• Blackberries (and their hybrids)

• Japanese wineberries

• Red currants, grown as cordons

• Figs

• Fan-trained peaches, apricots and nectarines

• Gooseberries grown as cordons

• Passion fruit

• Grapes

fruit for shady walls

• Morello cherry

• Blackberries

• Japanese wine berries

most likely to fruit in areas with late frost

• Damsons

• Sour/morello cherries

• Plum ‘Czar’ and ‘Marjories seedling’

• Late flowering blackcurrants, ‘Ben Tirran’ is just about the latest of all.

• Apples ‘Egremont Russet’, Discovery, Laxton’s Superb, Spartan

• Pear ‘Invincible’

ornamental fruit

• Kiwi

• Japanese wine berries

• Fig

• Passion fruit

• Standard blackcurrant

• Standard redcurrant

• Standard gooseberry

• Some blueberries

• Trained fruit trees

The young leaves of the kiwi are like delicate stained glass when illuminated by the sun. The vine is a strong grower and will quickly cover a wall if given a trellis or wires to spiral around.

Blackberries will do fairly well in partial shade but the fruit will lack the sweetness it gains from ripening in the sun.

fruit for quick results

Soft fruits including:

• Strawberries

• Raspberries

• Blackberries

• Blueberries

• All the currants

fruit for containers

• All fruit trees described as patio trees or on a dwarfing rootstock

• All minaret and ballerina fruit trees

• Black currants

• Figs

• Blueberries

• Strawberries

• Redcurrants

• Gooseberries

• Grapes

• Cape gooseberry

• Melon

not recommended for containers

Some of these may prosper in a pot for a year or two but long-term they will not prosper, yield will be low and unworthy of the effort of caring for them.

• Blackberries

• Raspberries

• Loganberries

• Japanese wineberries

• Kiwi

These sour cherries are more likely to fruit in areas with late frosts than the sweet cultivars.

The unusually shaped leaves of this aptly named fig ‘Ice Crystal’ make it particularly ornamental. The tree produces small, tasty fruits.

design

where to position the fruit garden

If you have the space then dedicating an area, however small, to growing fruit is a real luxury. The area can have much the same feel as the veg plot – it can be formal in design, decorative or more workaday. There is no one solution to the best garden for you, but ensure it has a design that pleases you, fits the space and will accommodate the fruit you want to grow. Fruit gardens sit well next to the veg patch, united by their practical intent and requirements. Both benefit from a warm sheltered spot, both should allow easy access to the plants being grown, and both need ready access to the compost heap, leafmould bins and water butt.

You might even decide to dispense with the freeloading shrubs and perennials and opt for plants that are no harder to care for but that really earn their keep, turning your whole outdoor space into a fruit lover’s paradise. The fruit garden can look splendid, whether large or small. Designing the area carefully, adding decorative touches, stylish furniture and colourful companion planting will make the garden a special place to spend time. In my fruit garden I have three different places to sit. Each catches the sun at a different time of day and it is one of my favourite spots to spend a few quiet moments with a cup of tea.

location

For the best fruit possible for the least effort you need to select the most appropriate area in your garden, or make a few changes to improve what space you have available. The ideal site will be warm, sunny and sheltered, with a good, fertile, reasonably deep, well-drained, moisture-retentive soil. Sun and light ripen fruit, making it sweet and delicious. At a pinch, sunshine for about half the day in the summer will suffice for most fruits, except for the real sun lovers – figs, apricots, peaches and grapes. The only exception would be in very hot countries where some shade from the sun in the hottest part of the day would be essential. Fruit blossom and fruits are easily damaged by extreme weather, high winds, frost and driving rain. High winds will also disrupt the activities of pollinating insects, which are vital to a good crop.

A wind break can be added to protect an area. It might form part of the garden’s design, dividing it from other parts of the garden, and it can, of course, be decorative. It is tempting to imagine that a solid fence or thick evergreen hedge might do the best job at protecting fruit from the wind, but in reality the force of the wind is diverted upwards by solid structures and tumbles over the top of them causing turbulence amongst the plants you are trying to protect. Better to think about filtering the wind, breaking it up and slowing it down through open fences, stout trellis or open hedges, such as beech.

If you can, avoid growing your fruit in a frost pocket. This means an area which is colder for longer than the surrounding garden because the cold air is trapped in the area, making it more likely to suffer from frosts. It can be simple to alleviate problems – perhaps the cold air is being trapped by garden features such as solid fences or hedges, which can be opened up slightly near ground level to allow the cold air to seep away. If a frosty spot is the only possible choice then choose late flowering, robust cultivars of the most frost-tolerant fruits and, if possible, cover vulnerable blossom with horticultural fleece to give the best chance of success.

This is my fruit garden – a stretch of flat, sunny lawn converted into something far more satisfying and productive.

Basic carpentry skills are all that is required to make these simple raised beds. Constructed from 25 × 4 cm (10 × 1½ in) boards and 10 × 10 cm (4 × 4 in) corner posts cut to length by a timber yard and assembled using long wood screws to attach the planks to the posts.

the fruit garden design

Before you begin to think about design, check you have all of the following information: a location, an idea of what fruit you would most like to pick from your own patch, how many bushes of each you might need to grow, and how much space they will require to flourish. You can then draw all of this information together and plan how to lay out your planting areas. Having a series of beds, possibly raised, bounded by paths will undoubtedly produce a garden that is easier to maintain than an open allotment-style garden. In the open garden there is a lot of space that is not productive to maintain. Using conveniently sized beds you can concentrate your efforts on the areas that matter. It is also a simple matter to protect the fruit within a bed from birds or frost with canes and mesh or fleece. You might choose to construct raised beds to escape difficult soil conditions, or simply cut beds into an area of turf.

the plan

Even the smallest of spaces benefit from being planned on paper. A rough sketch will do, with the basic dimensions of your proposed fruit area. In fact, it is often the smallest spaces that benefit most from a few moments trying different arrangements of paths and beds on paper. Beds should be just short of twice the length of your arm at most so plants can easily be tended without trampling the soil. The length is best limited too, otherwise walking around beds to get to others becomes tiresome. Note down what you intend to plant in each bed and how many plants will be needed. Traditional space allowances are based on the rows of the open, allotment-style garden. In a garden with beds, bushes can be arranged in staggered double rows to get the most out of the space, so plants are planted in blocks. But remember you will need to get to the fruit.

Keep things simple and easy to maintain. Make the garden no bigger than you need and keep all personal flourishes and flights of fancy maintenance-free. In other words, better to go for sensibly-sized square and rectangular beds than an intricate pattern of box edged dolls house sized beds. Add character and interest with ornaments, objet trouvé, furniture and sculpture.

raised beds

Building some form of raised bed has the benefit of escaping poor or problem soil. The addition of the raised framework allows an excellent growing medium to be built up in the beds. Soil that drains too freely and lacks fertility is simple to deal with by adding 30 cm (12 in) to 50 cm (18 in) deep beds crammed with beefed-up soil. Poor drainage is slightly trickier to escape and depends on the scale of the problem. Soil that is just a little sticky will probably only require the same sort of treatment as light soil. If water often pools on the surface of the soil then it may be necessary to improve the drainage before constructing very deep raised beds.

If the soil under the raised beds is clean and weed free, a mix of about 50/50 good quality topsoil and garden compost, or well rotted manure, can be used to fill the beds. Remember when you are filling the beds that the soil level will drop a little as the contents consolidate, so fill them generously. Any drop in level simply makes room for mulch later. There is an alternative way to fill raised beds, by building up deep bed mulch (see pages 34–35).

Wonderfully weathered slabs of timber, surrounded by gravel, make a practical and characterful path that is simple to construct.

A significant amount of time and expense has gone into constructing this rather grand path. Brick, stone and gravel combine to great effect.

paths

Paths in your fruit garden should provide easy access to the fruit growing in the beds, making getting at the ripe fruit an easy matter. If you are lucky enough not to be short of space then make all of the paths passable with a wheel barrow, remembering that plants will spill from the beds. If space is tight, plan some narrower paths but ensure that at least some part of each planting area is bounded by a path fit for the wheelbarrow – it makes lugging mulch around the garden so much easier.

The ideal path for the easy fruit garden is durable, effortlessly attractive, maintenance free and usable in all weathers. Paving stones, brick and gravel all make excellent, long lasting paths. Laying any kind of paving requires an investment of both time and money and some skill, and gravel is the easier, almost instant, option. A heavy duty weed suppressing membrane can be pinned securely over the network of paths, and a 5–7.5 cm (2–3 in) layer of gravel added on top. If you have raised beds, the membrane can be tucked securely under the bottom edges of the beds to stop weeds finding a way through. If you are using low beds then a low timber edge will be needed to delineate the path and retain the gravel. Grass paths can look fantastic if they are well maintained and the ground is well drained, and if you are building your fruit patch on an area of lawn they are already there – the quickest and easiest option. Some people opt for bark chip paths, but for me this is the worst surface possible. The chips scatter across the garden when they are dry, when wet they clog together, stick to boots and wheelbarrow wheels, and eventually rot down to a brown sludge.

There are a myriad of materials that can be combined to make a sensible path. Here gravel, interspersed with slabs of timber, make a simple but striking path.

fruit trees

Patio, minaret or ballerina fruit trees might be planted within the beds. Used to add height and contribute to the visual appeal of the garden, it would be more usual to plant larger trees outside the beds. They can be used as focal points or to divide the space. The most important point to remember when planting a tree is how much they will grow. Most of us plant single trees, and they always look rather skinny and forlorn when newly planted, barely occupying any space and casting only a match stick’s shadow. Move on a few years and that same tree should have thickened up and be sporting a healthy canopy, so imagine how this larger tree will sit in your design. Will it be casting shade on a real sun-lover, stopping light from reaching house windows or causing a nuisance to a neighbour?

‘President’ plum trees on a very dwarfing root stock, under-planted with lavender ‘Hidcote’, line the central path of my fruit garden.

supports

Growing fruit that can be trained neatly against a vertical support is a real space saving option, as the plants provide a good harvest but occupy very little growing space. Cane fruits, kiwi and passion fruit all need some form of support. This can be purely practical, taking advantage of existing structures by stretching along an existing wall, fence or even the side of a shed. Or the supports can be more decorative, providing the opportunity to add height to the garden, and build screens and divides to shape the garden’s structure.

posts and wires

If attaching wires to an existing fence, wall or shed is not an option, a series of freestanding posts can be erected and strung with wires. In my garden the posts are part of the structure of the raised beds. This means the posts are not actually set in the ground, which makes construction much easier. There is no limit to how posts and wires might be configured: short individual panels or a long run to form a boundary, a zig-zagged screen or even a u-shaped arbour. The principles and construction are incredibly simple but, because it is so flexible, it offers plenty of opportunities to be creative. Generally the post should be about 2–2.25 m (6–7 ft) tall with horizontal wires about 30–50 cm (12–18 in) apart. This set-up will suit all kinds of fruit.

Once the posts are erected mark the positions for the wire supports on the posts carefully. Measuring these accurately is important or else your wires may not be perfectly vertical. Screw the vine eyes into position – if your posts are soft wood it should be easy enough to do this by hand. Finally add the ‘wire’. This is not actually a metal wire but a tough plastic. This has the advantage that it can be used with neat plastic tensioning devices that grip the wire and enable you to pull the wire perfectly taut, and does not allow it to slip back so getting neat, ramrod straight wires, rather than sad washing lines. It is amazingly simple and much easier than wire, which can easily become kinked and bent.

With this simple system, a black plastic cord is held taut by a nifty, easy-to-use tensioning device.

In the finished bed raspberries, sweet peas and cordon red currants are all being ably supported.

Set at the side of the fruit garden, orientated to catch the sun in the morning and planted with robust grape vines, this straightforward structure will make a sheltered seating area once the vines become established. To a u-shaped raised bed with the same simple construction as the others in the garden, a simple trellis work of lengths roofing battens has been added. The same structure could be furnished with wires rather than battens for a similar effect.

arches, obelisks, pergolas and arbours

For something more showy, raspberries and blackberries can be trained up large ornate obelisks, bent to clothe arches, or even spiralled up a single, free-standing post. For very confined growing conditions choose less vigorous cultivars, such as the blackberry ‘Waldo’, to avoid tying them in becoming a battle and the plant literally swamping the structure. If you have a sheltered pergola to clothe however, a vigorous grape vine or passion fruit would be an excellent choice.

fruit cages

Defending soft fruit against attack from birds is one task that really cannot be overlooked. While some fruits are more vulnerable than others, blueberries, red currants and sweet cherries tend to be favoured, while sour cherries and blackcurrants are often left until last, and all need protection before they ripen. It is perfectly possible to do this by moving home-spun constructions of netting or chick wire supported on canes around the garden as different fruits become vulnerable. The alternative is to provide your fruit garden with a fruit cage. This is a permanent framework of vertical and horizontal metal poles, high enough to walk around in with ease, which span the whole soft fruit growing area. Before fruit ripens the framework is covered in netting which is carefully secured to the framework and the ground. This need not be a costly construction; basic kits are available from DIY stores and garden centres. The nets should be removed in the winter to allow the birds in to clear away pests and any remaining fruit.

In the first bed a heavy crop of ‘Sunshine Blue’ blueberries is being ably protected by a chickwire tent.

This is the most enchanting fruit cage – a Victorian aviary which now, rather ironically, is used to keep the birds out rather than pen them in.

This elegantly curved bench is a gentle full stop at the end of the vista through the centre of my productive garden, before the garden merges with the countryside beyond. Its stylish contours make it immensely comfortable.

looking good

Growing your own fruit can be a simple matter of planting a few strawberries in a flower pot on the terrace, or as adventurous as turning your whole plot over to fruiting plants. Wherever your fruit growing project falls between these two extremes, making it look good as well as productive will make the whole project far more rewarding. Keeping one eye on making the garden attractive and a comfortable place to spend time makes working outside more of a pleasure, making it more likely that the bits and pieces of maintenance get done.

The layout of the garden will go a long way to ensuring its good looks, what is often referred to as giving a garden ‘good bones’. If the pattern of beds looks tidy, the garden will look good even if the contents of the beds are less than orderly. Adding personal touches will really bring the garden to life. Sculptures, objet trouvé or a colourful well-placed bench will all make your patch special. Even the labels you choose (it is best to label – two years time and you might not be able to bring to mind the exact cultivar you planted) can be decorative, in chunky slate, shining copper or oversized homemade stained wooden batten. All look good and enhance the garden and gardening.