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them as a fan, step-over, espalier or cordon), and will provide you with years and years of delicious home-grown apples.It’s a good idea to taste as many as you can before you commit to buying. Ask to sample fruits growing in friends’ gardens

, studded with little fruits. To help it along I covered it with the largest cloche I could find.The strawberries, including the summer fruiters I mentioned in my last blog, are still producing fruit (unlike the raspberries). We harvest a cereal bowl full

I'm beginning to wonder whether growing old heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables is really worthwhile. My tomato 'Snow White Cherry', sold as a heritage variety by many companies, was a real disappointment this year, and I wish I'd grown

Growing fruit and vegetables seems to have really caught the public imagination. I do hope this isn't just a fad and really becomes a practical, viable and rewarding way of life for millions of new gardeners.That's one reason why we have launched

weeks ago, when I put my first homegrown aubergine of the year on a pizza and ate it in front of the non-grafted plants, which had only just come into flower. I've already harvested two aubergines, and another grafted plant has three fruits growing

. Alternatively, don't forget that many garden centres offer a good selection of young veg plants, so check these out too.Our Grow Yourself Healthy campaign aims to encourage people to grow more fruit, veg and other crops in their gardens and allotments

by planting an earlier ripening 'Opal' and later ripening 'Marjorie's Seedling', so I'd hoped to be enjoying plums from mid-July until September. My 'Opal' was planted about five years ago, but fruit has been non-existent until this year. Having waited

inspection of the peppers and, having been off recording Gardeners' Question Time for a few days, I was horrified to find grey mould (Botrytis cinerea) had taken a hold on several fruits.The 'Romano' peppers were slow to crop this year, but each plant is now

position.Just one word of caution. In my neck of the woods in the East Midlands I really can't risk growing tomatoes outside without plants succumbing to blight. This really is a devastating fungus disease, attacking the foliage and fruits of tomatoes (as

've been enjoying the fruits for months. Several cinnamon dusted apple cakes have been made and frozen, with the remaining apples to be eaten raw or left for the birds. Cut in half and wedged on to cut stems on the ancient hornbeam hedge along our drive