Archive for category Growing fruit

Bargain fruit trees – just £10 each

Oct 23

Posted by Suttons in Growing fruit, Special offers

Bargain fruit treesAutumn is the best time for planting fruit trees: the soil is both warm and moist, – the perfect environment for a young tree, allowing it to become established in its new home very quickly. When next spring comes around your fruit tree will be strong and secure, producing outstanding blossoms with delicious fruit following later in the year. No matter what size your garden, there’s always a space for a tree and many fruit trees can be grown in containers. It’s also a unique way to send someone special a memorable Christmas gift which will give years of pleasure if not giving immediately.

That’s why we’ve added this range of bargain fruit trees for just £10 each. Choose from Eating Apple Jonagold, Plum President, Cherry Sasha, Pear Burre Hardy and Cooking Apple Howgate Wonder.

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Grow your Own Nuttery

Oct 19

Posted by Suttons in Growing fruit

Go nuts with this fantastic collection of nut trees – not only providing you with your own nuts but these trees will give superb colour in your garden too. Great value at only £39.95 – don’t delay place your order now!
In this collection we offer the following specially selected trees – Sweet Almond Mandaline – first the beautiful delicate pink blossom in mid-April, followed by the soft shelled nuts that fall from the tree in the autumn – they’re easier to crack than most! This tree is truly adapted to our British climate and is self fertile. Eventual height 3-3.5m (10-12′); Kent Cobnut – this compact tree willl produce wonderful yellow catkins in spring followed by the superb flavoured nuts in the autumn. Try eating them when they are green, when they are so sweet and succulent. A superb performer in our climate with the finest flavour of all the varieties we have sampled. Eventual height 3-3.5m (10-12′); Red Filbert – this is one of the most versatile of trees with its stunning rich copper foliage, deep purple catkins and purple fruit plus the most flavoursome nuts! The Red Filbert deserves pride of place in your garden and if you have room it will make a very attractive productive hedge. Eventual height 3-3.5m (10-12′).

Grow your own nutteryIf you’ve ever fancied growing your own nuts then this new collection is for you, not only providing you with your own nuts but these trees will give superb colour in your garden too. With three specially selected trees – Sweet Almond Mandaline – first the beautiful delicate pink blossom in mid-April, followed by the soft shelled nuts that fall from the tree in the autumn – they’re easier to crack than most! This tree is truly adapted to our British climate and is self fertile. Kent Cobnut – this compact tree willl produce wonderful yellow catkins in spring followed by the superb flavoured nuts in the autumn. Try eating them when they are green, when they are so sweet and succulent. A superb performer in our climate with the finest flavour of all the varieties we have sampled. Red Filbert – this is one of the most versatile of trees with its stunning rich copper foliage, deep purple catkins and purple fruit plus the most flavoursome nuts! The Red Filbert deserves pride of place in your garden and if you have room it will make a very attractive productive hedge.

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Grow 3 varieties on 1 apple tree!

Oct 9

Posted by Suttons in Growing fruit, Special offers

Incredible – you can now grow three different varieties of apple or pear on 1 tree that’s small enough to fit on your patio! Three specially selected fruit varieties have been hand grafted to a compact rootstock and then grown on in a specialist nursery to create the highest quality multi cropping trees.

Called Family Trees, these plants will thrive in the smallest of gardens and even in a large container on your patio – and the three fruits mean a bigger and longer harvest. You can enjoy the full beauty of apple blossoms in spring before the rewards of a bumper harvest without a large garden or orchard.

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Blackberries – just ripe for the picking

Sep 25

Posted by Bea in Growing fruit, Recipes

It’s that time of year again when a cold can catch you unawares and all hell breaks loose with coughs and sneezes, runny noses – all the usual suspects. So is it a coincidence or the very clever way that nature seasonably produces its wares, that the delicious  and highly nutritional blackberry is in abundance on hedgerows and many gardens? The medicinal values of the virtuous blackberry have been  widely used for hundreds of years, and for cold and flu sufferers the blackberry is straight out of natures medicine cabinet - it is rich in astringent tannins which help to dry up secretions and protect mucous membranes throughout the body from irritation, inflamation and infection.

Take a look at this superb recipe – just the job to alleviate  your symptoms:

Blackberry Cordial

900g (2lb) Blackberries , or enough to yield 570ml(1pint) blackberry juice

6 tablespoons  of Honey (local if possible)

10 cloves

5 slices fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

7 tablespoons brandy or dark rum

Juice the blackberries (this can be done through a sieve) Place in a pan with the honey, ginger and cinnamon and bring to the boil over a low heat, keep stirring until the honey has dissolved. Simmer for 5 minutes then leave to cool. When cold, add the brandy or rum and pour into a sterilised bottle and seal.

Obviously not one for the children, but this could also be used as a tasty sauce for pouring over stewed apples, ice cream etc.

Blackberries are generally planted between November and March, prefering partial shade  and slightly acid soil. New from Suttons is the Ouachita Super Sweet a  thornless variety that tastes  superb and produces an abundance of large fruit. Well worth a try.

If you haven’t been wild blackberry picking already why not have a go this weekend? What better than picking blackberries warm off the bush – delicious, and give yourself a treat by making  a blackberry and apple crumble.

My recipe for blackberry & apple crumble.

Blackberries

Cooking apples x 2  (Bramleys are best)

juice of half a lemon

approx 3 desert spoons of dark brown sugar.

For topping:

3 oz Butter (cold from fridge, do not use margerine)

6 oz plain flour white or wholemeal

3 desert spoons dark brown sugar

handful of porridge oats.

Select what size dish you want to make your crumble in. (we are not doing exact measurements here so adjust ingredients accordingly – it’s that easy!)

Fill your dish almost to the top with blackberries and slices of cooking apple (no need to pre -cook) and squeeze over some lemon juice. Sprinkle with sugar.

Make the topping:

Cut up the butter into cubes and rub into the flour. Add the sugar, mix together then sprinkle over the fruit (try and make sure that all the fruit is covered). Top the crumble with the porridge oats then cook for approximately 25 – 30 minutes. I have a fan oven that I set at 180 c.

Enjoy with some delicious  creamy custard.blackberry resized

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About that Plum Tree ….

Sep 8

Posted by Bea in Growing fruit

Organic fertiliserNow that I have pruned back my plum tree I’ve turned my thoughts on how best to encourage a bumper crop for next year. In the course of my research I discovered that should I get a bumper crop I will have before me a natural and delicious homegrown ANTI AGEING pot of gold! Throw away the wrinkle cream and eat plums and their dried version prunes instead – the benefits are amazing, you will be drenched with vitamins B, C and E, and in Minerals – Iron, Calcium and Phosphorus, Magnesium, Sodium and Manganese, all important, but Vitamins C & E are known to have an antioxidant action which helps to protect the body against free radicals which in turn will help prevent degenerative diseases and also helps to slow down the ageing process ( me thinks I feel an orchard coming on!) One of my hobbies is running and working out at the gym, all good stuff but in order to give my muscles the energy they require to prevent me flagging, prunes would be the ideal high energy low weight food that could be carried and eaten when needed – usually before and during training. This would also apply to athletes, cyclists etc. So how do I go about encouraging this amazing tree to produce this crock of gold for next year? It’s not as difficult as you may think – read on Mc Duff!

By this time you should have pruned back your plum tree to encourage it to  channel all it’s energy into making stocky growth in order for it to be able to bear all the weight of a lot of fruit (Brownie point 1) In October it will need a feed of bone meal which breaks down during the winter months and by spring will be a valuable source of root promoting phospahtes. (All other Brownie points here on in will be allocated accordingly) In Spring and late Summer it will benefit greatly by a dose of general purpose compost (Suttons General Purpose Pelleted Organic Fertiliser would be ideal) or fish blood and bone. When the first flowers appear  – usually March or April – remove half the blossom, and leave the remaining flowers to set fruit.  This time next year I could be oh so young! (They also say that laughter is the best medicine….!)

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Grow your own blueberries

Sep 7

Posted by Suttons in Growing fruit, Special offers

It’s easy to grow your own blueberries with this week’s special offer, 3 bushy plants for just £16.95. Visit the Suttons site for full details.

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Little Jack Horner – I want words !

Sep 2

Posted by Bea in Growing fruit

Victoria[1].plumSo according to the poem this little chap sat in a corner, stuck his thumb in his pudding and pulled out a plum and said ‘what a good boy am I’. So he only had one? Well I know how he felt! I went  in the garden and looked at my tree, I looked and I looked -still nothing to see, then I went out the next day and my heart leapt with glee, as hanging quite proudly – one plum on my tree! Ok so it was a rubbish rhyme but I did only have the one plum! So what happened? Well in all honesty I was hoping that it would thrive by wishfull thinking and not a lot else.  After all it started out it’s life having been grafted onto a good rootstock and I thought that was it! However I have since discovered that my plum was probably the ‘King’ fruit that should have been removed sometime in June, and to all intent and purpose should not have been there anyway! So I’m going to have a go at training it to grow as a fan against the South facing fencing for the next season and hopfully be able to ’stick in my thumb’ and pull out at least two next year! Darn! I forgot – I have to kill the ‘King’ – do you detect a touch of deja vue……

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Growing strawberries!

Aug 25

Posted by Gardening Diva in Growing fruit

Albion strawberriesThis is really my first year at actually getting any fruit from my strawberry plants and I have to say they can be quite a frustrating crop. Last year I planted the variety ‘Albion’ which grew a lot of leaves but only managed about two flowers and no strawberries. However we had a rotten summer so I blame the weather fully for that!

This year I am pleased to say that they have again produced lots of leaves and runners but joy of joy I now have an abundance of strawberries and they are BIG – about three times the size of normal strawberries and stay lovely and firm unlike some of my other varieties which seem to go from ripe to spoiled in the space of about an hour! (hence the frustration part!) You wait and wait and wait for them to get red all over and then you turn your back for five mins and they are starting to rot! But not with ‘Albion’, they are producing lots of lovely tasting strawberries.

I have three other varieties on the go at the moment including one from QVC which have turned out to be very disappointing and another from Suttons called ‘Tarpan‘ which has had an abundance of red flowers (very pretty and attractive) and lots of dainty oval strawberries with a lovely sweet flavour.

My final strawberries are a mystery as I either forgot to label them when I planted them in the tub or the label got lost and while I have been getting three or four strawberries a week they are the ones that go from almost ripe to over-ripe very quickly so will probably throw them in the compost at the end of the year and stick to ‘Albion’ and ‘Tarpan’ and from perusing the Suttons catalogue think I will aim for ‘Lucy’ next year also as it says it likes the rain which is ideal and should stop them spoiling too soon!

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Bountiful Blackberries and a Thorny Issue.

Aug 14

Posted by CYeoh in Growing fruit

BlackberriesI love blackberries.  They are so yummy and there are so many around this year.  At the bottom of my fella’s garden is a huge bush of blackberries and I have been out there picking blackberries at every opportunity.   I snack on fruit (and crisps and chocolate – but I don’t think I can grow those) in the evenings and at my desk at work.  10 mins or so picking these the night before has saved me a fortune!  The only problem is that I keep discovering little thorns on my hands and arms!

I am thinking about getting my own blackberry bush for my own garden and am eyeing up Blackberry Ouachita Super Sweet.  I am certain I have picked more than £18 worth of blackberries already and this variety is virtually thornless.  We supply them as 1 year old plants, grown in a pot.  They are given the best start in life by those good people in our nursery who really know what they are doing and as blackberries are one of the easiest fruits to grow I figure it would be extremely difficult for me to mess it up.

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Are You Going To Blueberry Fair….

Aug 4

Posted by Bea in Growing fruit

Blueberrry[1].in.pot.belly.pig resizedWell I am! Parsley, Sage, Rosemary for poetic effect and Thyme, but back to the Blueberry. I have had a fabulous amount of Blueberries this year and some of them have been whoppers! I was initially concerned that due to the fact they had been rather brutaly ensconsed into their   new home complete with the pot bellied pig barbeque that I used as a container, they would not produce anything at all and quite possibly die! After all  – this new home consisted of garden top soil,  the wrong flavour, the wrong colour and uninviting to say the least. But it just goes to show that the old saying ‘ne’er the twain shall meet’ does not, in this instance, apply. The fact that I had continued to ‘top it up ‘ with ericaceous compost and feed seemed to keep it quite happy and as I said  -  very prolific. Gardening seems to be a case of trial and error but as for  blueberries – they sure are a ‘true love of mine.’

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