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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
Like Adam Pasco, I’ve just returned from the Gardeners’ World Magazine 20th Anniversary cruise. Adam wrote about the gardens we visited in his blog, earlier this week, including Mount user, Bodnant, The Castle of Mey and The Beth Chatto Gardens
and fruit to place a 5cm - 10cm layer of straw on the surface of the soil.Placing a length of seep hose under the straw allows you to connect it to a hosepipe which will stop soil splash during watering.If you are allergic to straw or find it difficult
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
've listed some of my favourite fruits below.Plants grow up to 1.8m and bear sweet berries from July. Best suited to large, sheltered plots.Good soft fruit varietiesBlackcurrant 'Boskoop Giant'Grows well in shade and on heavy soil. It forms red berries
The ripened ovary or ovaries of a seed bearing plant. It may take one of several different forms, eg, follicle, achene, capsule, nut, pome, berry, drupe or syncarp.
