Don't expect home-dried fruit to look like the store-bought stuff, and when you have a look at what's in the bought stuff, you'll probably agree that's a good thing! Read article in: Summer week 4

Earwigs and garden weevils are quite different groups of insects, but are pests in your fruit trees in very similar ways. Both climb up your fruit trees and then live in them where they are active at night, and eat young shoots, leaves and wor [...]

Plums are a wonderful fruit for preserving because they lend themselves to such a wide variety of methods: bottling, brandied, jam, dried, fruit leather, pickled, chutney, frozen, or plum wine. Fruit preserving will always cause some loss of n [...]

One of the things we know all about as fruit growers is the variability of our climate; no matter where you live, each growing season you’ve got a good chance of experiencing an extreme condition like flood, drought, fire, or heatwave. This me [...]

Pruning young trees into the right shape when you plant them is super important, as it sets the tree up correctly for the rest of its life. The shape you choose will depend on your purpose for the tree, but once you have decided what shape you [...]

Create your personalised Black spot (Apple scab) management plan. Find activity in Autumn - Week 1

A small, upright herb that can grow up to 3 m high, but rarely gets above about 1m. The stems are ribbed and often tinged with purple or red. It has large silvery-green alternate leaves from 2-8 cm long and from 0.5-5 cm wide with toothed marg [...]

In autumn fruit trees start to shut down before becoming dormant in winter, but before then, the tree needs to store reserves of carbohydrates and nutrients in the flower buds to use next spring. The tree needs a lot of energy to produce flowe [...]

Healthy trees are less prone to attacks by pests and diseases, and prevention is usually easier (and often more effective) than the cure! Read the article in Summer - Week 9

We love being part of the sustainable food movement, which covers everything from people taking an interest in where their food comes from, to permaculture and self-sufficiency. It’s with great interest then that we read this interview with Mr [...]

Fruit thinning involves pulling off a proportion of the fruit while it is very small, and is one of the most important jobs in your fruit tree calendar, though it is often sadly neglected by home gardeners. It is routinely used for most decidu [...]

Many plants that we think of as weeds are actually “dynamic accumulators”, or plants that extract and gather nutrients—specifically inorganic minerals—from the soil or air, and make them available to other plants, animals, and even to us! Read [...]