RHS Award Winning Varieties
Quality UK Grown Plants
12 Month Guarantee
100% SSL Secured Shopping
It’s more than fifty years and over three million grafts since I first held a grafting knife in my hands and was captivated by clonal propagation techniques. I marvelled at how a plant with roots would accept what is no more than a small shoot cut from another tree and that in a very short space in time, that shoot would grow and flourish and bear fruits attached to its newly adopted parent. Continue reading
Many people move to new homes where the previous owners or even the builders had planted fruit trees. In pre-war years there was often an emphasis on providing new homeowners with two fruit trees – an eating apple and a cooking apple. The reality is that these trees usually get left unpruned or get hacked about as the garden owners have no time or knowledge to manage the trees. Continue reading
Every now and again you may find that one of your fruit trees fails to produce fruit and this may well happen after several years of good fruiting. This is not terribly unusual and can happen at any time and there are usually very good reasons for this. Alternatively a tree may not want to start fruit production at all so let’s consider what you might do to get your tree into a fruiting habit. Continue reading
Finding fallen, immature fruits underneath your fruit trees can be very disappointing and quite often wrong conclusions are drawn. Sometimes fruit drop is beneficial, sometimes it is annoying but not a problem and sometimes it can be a sign of more worrying factors such as pest infestation. Continue reading
Pyramid fruit trees are popular forms for growing apples and pears and plums, gages and damsons as they allow you to grow single specimens, which managed well, will result in fairly small and attractive trees. Continue reading
It is quite possible to grow most fruit trees and soft fruit plants in containers; however to do this you do need to carefully prepare in the same way that you would prepare the open ground before planting out. Unfortunately many people acquire a tree or plant and then just shove it in a pot or container without any thought and that usually ends up with the poor thing hardly surviving or perhaps dying. Continue reading
We are often asked questions about the benefits, advantages or disadvantages of commercially farmed versus garden grown or home grown produce. So we have produced this infographic to try and explain some of the things we are asked. Continue reading
In an ideal world, when it comes to planting bare root fruit trees and bushes, soil and weather conditions will be perfect, but, of course, in reality, this is rarely the case. We therefore have to manage as best we can as we need to ensure the planting of bare rooted stock is undertaken in what is often the worst period of the year for weather – December to March! So how can we obviate the problems caused by adverse weather conditions? Continue reading
Unfortunately many gardeners do not have what they perceive should be ideal growing conditions in their gardens and therefore quite often do not grow anything useful in what might seem to be the most challenging places. This is very unfortunate as almost anywhere in the garden can grow plants well except, perhaps, very dry and very dark places. And from my fruit growing perspective I can advise you that fruit can be grown almost anywhere in your garden other than the two places I have just noted. Continue reading
If you are growing restricted forms of top fruit trees – cordons, espaliers, fans, pyramids, stepovers or even bushes – you need to undertake your pruning in the summer to help ensure maximum fruitfulness and vigour as well as for keeping your trees in good shape. Additionally, the removal and shortening of shoots and thereby leaves will allow more light to get the fruit which is essential for late ripening varieties. Continue reading
The flowers of the ‘top’ fruit trees that we grow in the UK – apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches and nectarines – have both male and female parts and for a fruit to be created these female parts must receive pollen from the male parts of another flower – usually from another tree. In the majority of cases this means that you cannot grow a single top fruit tree by itself – unless you happen to have another close by in a neighbour’s garden. Continue reading
It is interesting to note that the last few years have seen more and more gardeners growing their plants organically and this is being reflected commercially with a considerable number of growers doing likewise. But why is this happening? Is it just a modern fad or are the public generally becoming more concerned about the number of chemicals that are being used in the food they are going to eat? Continue reading
Login / Register