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This autumn I intend to add to my collection of fruiting shrubs for birds. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that plants are available more cheaply now we’ve hit bare-root planting season.Unlike pot-grown specimens, bare-root plants are dug

I’m a big fan of raspberries, which are the most reliable of all the soft fruit crops that I grow. My soil is heavy and alkaline, and I’ve found that autumn-fruiting raspberries last much longer in it than summer-fruiting varieties. So now I stick

What's the point of having a compost heap unless it's to breed fruit flies. That's the way my entomologist's mind works. During the summer great clouds of them billowed up every time I dumped the kitchen waste. They got in my eyes and hair

Home-grown fruit is something I find difficult to resist; fruit trees make great ornamental, as well as edible, plants. I’ve notice that some of my espalier and cordon fruit trees are passed their best, so I’ll have to remove them. This always makes

It's been a good year for many crops, but there have been so many critters feeding on the fruit.Most years we lose a fair few apples to the local birds. I never really mind, although it is irritating when they peck small holes in fruits, which

gloves I was wearing.We harvested some early autumn-fruiting raspberries, which we enjoyed later with some wonderfully creamy organic vanilla ice cream. This is the first proper fruiting year from many of my raspberry canes, and I’m pleased

With the fruit swelling on your strawberries it's time to protect them and cover the soil around the plants with a mulch. This will prevent the crop getting splashed with mud when it rains. And don't forget to net the plants against birds and keep

Despite summer drought in my part of the East Midlands, my apple crop has been pretty good on most trees, but there’s just one problem. A much larger proportion of fruit than ever before has been pecked on the tree itself, resulting in small holes

We all forget to do things sometimes, but I’m rather ashamed about this omission. As I walked around the fruit trees in our mini-orchard last week, I was horrified to discover that a few of them had grown too big for the ties I’d used when staking

Just as your fruits are beginning to ripen, grey mould (a fungus called botrytis) can ruin them. Small brown spots form on the skin, then spread over the whole fruit, turning it soft and brown. As the fruit deteriorates, a fuzzy grey layer of mould