Part of the joy of growing your own fruit is being able to provide your family with healthy, home-grown food, even in the coldest days of winter. There are lots of different preserving techniques available, all with their own pros and cons, an [...]

This article from the Weekly Times Farmers Handbook in 1940 looks at one of the tricks orchardists used to use to combat frost Read the article in Winter - Week 6

This recipe for cobbler is one of our family favourites, because it’s easy to whip up fairly quickly, it uses fruit (which we always have available), and it has a moister topping than most cobbler recipes. It originally came from a recipe in t [...]

Are you still eating fresh fruit that grew in your garden this season? Did you bottle or preserve any fruit this year? With the combination of growing the right quantities, good storage, and a range of preserving techniques, it’s not that hard [...]

Fruit tree borer can kill whole trees, or sometimes just limbs, and are often found to be the culprit behind a mysterious dead limb, with a mass of frass (brown, sawdust-like stuff) on it. Read the article in Winter - Week 8

If you know what to look for, and you’re lucky, you might be able to glean some free fruit trees, either from your garden or somebody else’s. Volunteer trees (ie, trees that come up by themselves) may have grown from seed, or can be suckers fr [...]

Its proper name is Fumaria officinalis, but fumitory is also known as earthsmoke, vapour, fumewort, wax dolls, beggary, nidor and kaphnos. It’s a herbaceous annual plant, found as a widespread weed in disturbed sites, bushland areas and garden [...]

Drainage is an important issue for fruit trees, and periods of heavy rain provide the perfect opportunity to see how good your drainage is. Although some trees tolerate it better than others, they will never thrive on a site where the water do [...]

Young fruit trees start life with a very small root system, so it makes sense to plant them in a welcoming environment, with a friable soil structure, good drainage and readily available nutrient while their roots get established. Choosing the [...]

We’re strong advocates of learning to love and appreciate plants that are often defined as weeds, and we spend much of the Grow Great Fruit Program extolling their multiple virtues. However, we do acknowledge that sometimes you need to kill or [...]

Gorse, also known as furze, is a highly invasive woody, prickly plant that was initially introduced into Australia for use as a hedging plant—a purpose it serves well in the UK. Unfortunately it has thrived in this  country and now has occupie [...]

It’s usually pretty obvious by the end of spring whether or not your grafts have taken, which gives you the chance to decide what to do next. In this article we look at some successes and failures to see what we can learn. Read the article in [...]