Fruit gardening.

Grow your own fruit in a UK garden, from strawberries and raspberries to apple trees and rhubarb. 6 guides.

Guide categories

Growing fruit
Start with easy soft fruit for a crop in a year or two, add a tree on a dwarf rootstock for the long term, plant bare-root in winter, and pick your spot in full sun.
Growing strawberries
Plant in sun with the crown level with the soil, mulch with straw, net against birds, and swap summer and perpetual types for fruit from June to the first frosts.
Growing raspberries
Plant bare-root canes while dormant, string up wires to support them, then prune by type: summer raspberries after fruiting, autumn ones to the ground in late winter.
Growing apples
Pick the rootstock to fit your space, give it a pollination partner, plant it bare-root in winter, then prune lightly each winter and pick from late summer on.
Growing rhubarb
Plant a dormant crown in rich soil, leave it alone for the first year, then pull the stalks from spring and stop by midsummer. Eat the stalks, never the leaves.
Caring for a fruit tree
Prune apples and pears in winter and stone fruit in summer, feed with potash in late winter, mulch and water young trees, and thin a heavy crop in early summer.