Fruit bushes - what to plant and when?

DevilsAdvocate1

Hi,

I'm a very inexperienced gardener. We have a mixture of roses in the front of the house which were in place when we moved here 15 years ago. In the back garden we have some nice flowering bushes too, but have idea what they are.

Anyway, we are currently having a 2 story extension built and I've just been outside and noticed that all the bushes are ruined. In some cases it looks like they've been chopped down and in others they have been completely trampled on.

I've always liked the idea of having fruit bushes in the garden especially as I spend a fortune on fruit (especially soft fruit like strawberries and raspberries). It seems like a good time to replace them - well not now, but when the builders have finished in 3 months time!

The ground is clay and the back of the house is NW facing with the front SE. We actually get a fair bit of sun in the back because there is nothing to the side of us to cast a shadow. The top end of the garden is in the sun from 11am in the summer with the area increasing during the course of the day.

Has anyone any ideas of fruit plants which would work? And when is the best time of year to plant them? We have a cherry tree at the bottom of the garden and it hasn't done very well at all (though its still alive!).

Thanks for your help, D.

Primrose

I have two blackberry bushes against a north facing fence which rarely gets any sunshine and every year I still get a terrific crop of fruit from them.
All my other soft fruit bushes - gooseberry, redcurrant and blackcurrant are planted in the borders in the front garden where they get sunshine for part of the day. They all thrive and provide lots of fruit for the freezer. The secret is to dig in lots of well rotted manure in a big hole around the roots when you first plant them.
Strawberries prefer a sunny position. They are frost hardy so you could dig some manure into your borders and then pop them in anywhere where you have some space. My plants have been in for three years now. They grow new runners with fresh roots every year after fruiting, so in time you will get lots of extra free plants.

If you want raspberries, the most trouble free variety to grow is Autumn Bliss - a late summer/early autumn fruiting variety. They don't need staking up on canes and wires like the summer varieties and pruning is easy. After fruiting, simply cut the canes right down to about six inches above ground level and new shoots will appear from the roots every Spring.

From what you say about the amount of sunshine your garden gets, any soft fruit bushes would do well. The secret is in good preparation of the soil first and then watering them regularly until the roots get established. Early spring would be the best time to plant them.

conradmum

What fruit do you like to eat? That should be your first question. Redcurrants often produce abundantly but if the berries are left to rot on the bush, there's not much point. Or blackcurrants - not much point in growing them either unless your family likes to eat them raw or you have the time and knowhow to process them.

A good investment in terms of expenditure would be a couple of blueberry bushes (in pots if your soil isn't acidic). Blueberries are always expensive in the shops and the bushes are pretty much trouble free, though you may have to net them from the birds (I thought British birds might not eat them as they aren't native - they soon proved how stupid I was!). They produce over several weeks as well, so you can just eat the fruit as it ripens, rather than, as with many other soft fruit plants, all of it ripening at once and you having to madly process it all before it goes off. They're also very pretty in the autumn and spring!

RAS

Start by deciding what you like. Then think about what is costly in the shops.

The far end of the back graden will be good for fruits that need sunshine. If you grow exactly the same variety near the back wall of the house it will fruit anything up to 3 weeks later.

Raspberries are available that fruit from June through to November. I had four canes of the autumn fruiting ones to start with and 10 canes produce one or two punnets a week from September to November until the first frosts. The summer varieities tend each to crop for about 3-4 weeks.

You can grow red or white currants and goosberries as cordons, taking very little space. Personally I think they ones sold in the shops are almost always underripe and they tend to be a lot nicer in September. Black berries need a lot of wall space but may fruit for upto 6 weeks.