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). 4) The quince.Correct: only one is a fruit.We have just harvested quinces from a neighbour's tree - the one that I planted is only a couple of years old and too pre-pubescent to fruit. The quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a rather neglected tree native

, 'Florence', which is still yielding masses of fruit. The flavour of home-grown strawberries beats anything you can buy at the supermarket. The variety favoured by commercial growers is 'Elsanta', which is apparently robust enough to withstand rough treatment

.Beefsteak tomato plants are as robust as any other greenhouse variety, taking up just as much space, but producing a fraction of the total yield you would expect. Yes, individual fruits are bigger, but in my book bigger isn't always better!Rather than producing

, it's the apples and pears that have been the subject of my attentions. As we know, apple trees blossom picturesquely in spring. These flowers then develop into small fruits and then, in June, the tree shrugs and loses a fair few of these (this

we first started out. The raised beds and wood chip paths were a lot of effort at the time, but they were worth it. The fruit bushes and raspberry canes were a bit of a slog too - raspberries need such a well prepared trench to flourish, and I

, brought into the warm and protected environment of my greenhouse to ripen in time for Wimbledon. When I came to harvest them, bowl in hand, the fruits were gone.Now it's the blackberries, which are just starting to ripen and will hopefully provide rich

'Hundreds and Thousands', and I was lucky enough to be given a trial pack of seeds. It's a funny variety, with low-growing plants covered with numerous marble-sized fruits. I grew one plant unsuccessfully in the greenhouse and many very successfully

in a pot, which will restrict the growth, but be very careful: if it doesn't get enough water the ends of the leaves turn crispy. The formerly delightful foliage will appear to have been dipped in broken biscuits.There are a series of miniaturised fruit

neighbouring plants, as illustrated in the David Attenborough documentary The Private Life of Plants. But it's the berries we're after. I'm lucky to have lots of hedgerows growing near where I live, so I collect plenty of fruit at this time of year. Obviously

in there.The garden spiders, Aranaeus diadematus, are starting to get very large and obvious, especially those round the compost bins. We compost everything we can, including kitchen waste, so clouds of fruit flies emerge every time I lift off the lid. Even