by Sammy Stein

Created on: November 16, 2009

Growing your own fruit can be immensely satisfying. With good planning, some thought about what you will grow and a bit of know-how, you can have a productive garden which produces a range of fruit for most of theyear. You can also choose varieties which are not generally available in shops but which make reliable garden crops.

Many people, especailly those with limited space in their yards, give up the idea of producing fruit in their site but this need not be so. Fruit trees as such do require space but apples, pears, plums, redcurrants, gooseberries and other fruit can be grown in most gardens.

First, assess your site, think about which fruits you can grow where. South facing fences can be great fruit producing areas, as can west facing parts of the yard. Many fruit varieties come in cordon forms where the tree is restricted in form to a single main stem, which means the flowers and fruit are all on a form requiring minimum space. Cordon trees can be used to create a screen or grown against a sunny wall. You can grow pears, apples, peaches and nectarines on cordons and you can graft different varieties on to the main stem so you get a long cropping season too. Dessert pears do well on a south facing wall whilst east or west facing walls are best for plums, gages and red currants. Many fruit trees, especially those in the Prunus family (cherry, peach, plum) also have wonderful scented blossoms in the spring.

Most fruit trees including apples, plums and pears are available on dwarf forms suitable for the garden as cropping is easier and many of the varieties produce heavy crops in most cases. In southern area vines can be very productive, given the right combination of sunshine and rainfall. Fruit such as tomatoes can be grown with relative ease in containers thanks to the breeding of several high-yield , good flavour varieties.

Many berries come in climbing form, which saves space and can be trained for easier cropping. You can train them over fancy supports or have them simply climbing over walls and fences. Fruit suitable includes black berries, boysenberries and loganberries. These produce good crops of sweet fruit.

Some fruits such as currants have bush varieties and will grow well in the right site in a container. They have pretty flowers in the spring too. Figs are more productive in sunken containers as they produce more fruit if their roots are restricted.

For any fruit, before you plant it check the growing conditions they require in terms of soil,

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