Growing Fruit

Everyone can find space for fruit in the garden, even if it's only strawberries in a window box.

Currants and Berries

These are easy to grow and very productive. There's a wide selection of varieties available to extend the fruiting season; from Christine, which crops in May and June, through to Malling Opal, which fruits right through to the beginning of October.

If you have a good, sunny garden, they can be grown right out in the open; if you are not very sheltered, cloches can be used to protect the soft fruits from all kinds of nasty weather.

Even if you only have a patio, you can grow your very own strawberries in a specially designed strawberry tub, or as an addition to any of your summer bedding tubs.

Raspberries come in both short and long caned varieties; but require a really well-prepared and fertile soil.

Early varieties include: Malling Minerva and Glen Ample; late season recommendations are Bryce and All Gold. Joan Jay is an absolutely stonking variety from which you can harvest berries from late July all the way through until the first frost.

Currants

Currants tend to prefer an open, sunny position but will tolerate partial shade. Dig the ground over really well in the autumn and chuck in plenty of rotted manure or compost.

Ben Conan is a heavy cropping blackcurrant variety, providing up to eight pounds of fruit from each bush. The Junifer redcurrant is the earliest cropping redcurrant, ready to pick from early July. This variety crops on both new and one year old wood stock, so it should provide fruit from its very first season as long as nothing disastrous happens.

Blackberries

Loch Ness is a thornless blackberry which produces large, firm fruit with a strong flavour from mid-august until the first nippy frost. It produces short, upright canes, suitable for a smaller garden, and has won the RHS award of merit.

Apples and Pears

These trees are brilliant in any garden that has the space, the blossom gives you something nice to look at in the spring, then you get the warm happy glow of picking your own fresh fruit straight from the tree. Warm summer days and cool summer evenings are ideal for growing apples, and there are many varieties available depending on the size and shape of tree you're after.

In a smaller garden, Cordon trees can be grown as a wall covering or hedge, and there are even varieties suitable for growing in containers that will bear fruit along the main stem.

Peaches, Apricots and Nectarines...

...are best grown in the south of England against a south-facing wall or fence.

Figs

If you have any space left against your south-facing wall, a brown turkey fig produces great foliage and will fruit in late August to mid September. They can also be grown in a container, but bear in mind they only really work out in the warmest parts of the country.