Category Archives: Gardening Tips

How to get more fruit faster from newly planted trees?

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Some questions oft asked when you call us up are:

“I want a new fruit tree: which type will give me fruit quickly?

Which size should I order – most fruit trees come in 3-4 sizes?

How do I look after it so it will give me fruit soon?”

OK, you love to grow fruit because you really want to eat it, that’s fine.

The first two answers are short:

  • It’s best to choose a variety based on things like flavour, cooking or eating use and disease resistance suitable for your area.
  • Get the right size of fruit tree for your garden or orchard. Half standard & bush trees should crop the fastest and will, in time, crop the biggest, but they may not be the starting size you need.

The important bit is:

How to care for a new fruit tree to get fruit fast!

Think of them as an athlete – before they can get really strong on top, they need strong legs.
Before your tree can make strong crops, it needs strong, deep roots.

This can take time – you must sacrifice fruit to speed it up!

  1. In their first year of flowering, enjoy their blossom and then cut off all the little (usually green) fruitlets as soon as the petals fall.
  2. In year two, thin the fruit by about half.

In following years, thin out early fruit that is too thickly bunched.
As it matures and gets heavier, remove fruit that crowds or pulls down weak stems or if you see that it is poorly shaped when you inspect it.

This really is the way to get a big, healthy young tree with large crops on it sooner!

By helping your young plants spend less energy on fruit when they are new, you will ensure strong root growth.
From the tree’s point of view, its roots are looking for more than nutrition in the soil, they are looking for survival – it doesn’t know that you’ve been thoughtful enough to buy a tree stake to support it!

Apart from that, mulching in spring, watering in dry periods and keeping weeds down all the time is all you need to do to help your fruit tree settle in smoothly.
Nitrogen based, liquid feeds are very helpful in spring to give the leaves a boost, which is in turn good for the roots & fruits.
Unless your soil is already chalky and alkaline, you can also collect eggshells to scatter on the ground aroung your trees for their slow release calcium.

When do I prune a tree? Winter and Summer.

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Pruning a tree is not like trimming a hedge, although a seriously overgrown hedge is basically a row of scrubby trees that could need pruning to restore it to a proper hedge again.

Young ornamental trees may be shaped using secatuers to prune side shoots, but removing branches on an adult tree will need a special pruning saw or saw blade for your bow saw.

Winter is usually the right time to prune a tree.

Why is winter the best time to prune most trees?
Some trees will bleed sap if they are pruned in spring. This is not likely to kill a healthy tree, but it’s best to avoid it.
Birch, Laburnum, Hornbeam, Lime (as in the common roadside tree, not the citrus) and Poplar trees are all potentially heavy bleeders, so they are always pruned in late autumn to  early winter for this reason.

Magnolia and Walnut trees are pruned in late summer. The Walnut may lose some sap at this time, but within a year it will have healed more than it would a year on from an early winter pruning.

That said summer is often a fine time to prune as well.

Flowering cherry trees and many stone fruit trees (i.e. cherries, plums, peaches – these are all in the group Prunus) should be pruned in summer only.
This avoids the risk of Silver leaf disease, which spreads in winter.

As for pretty much all other trees, pruning them in summer or winter makes little difference.
If a tree needs pruning to remove Dead, Diseased or Damaged wood, it is usually best to do it right away.

When do I clip, trim & prune my hedge? Winter and Summer.

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Winter is generally the best time to prune something and it sure is the best time to trim a young hedge.

Hedges must be clipped and sometimes pruned. Fruit trees need some pruning to maintain the best crops. Older ornamental trees can need pruning if they are damaged or get in the way.

Why is winter usually the “best” time to prune and clip your hedge or tree?

During winter, pruning above ground will cut off the least energy from the plants.
The plant’s sugary sap is stored underground, in the roots.

Mature hedges are good to trim in summer.
Mature hedges that flower are best trimmed after the flower or seeds have fallen.

Beech and Hornbeam are clipped in summer to encourage them to keep their autumn leaves all winter.

Cherry fruit and flowering cherry trees are an exception, they should be pruned in summer to avoid the risk of disease.

But all hedges or other trees and fruit are best trimmed in winter. Dead, diseased or damaged branches should be removed as and when they appear.

Clay Soil – Problem or Blessing?

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We want to say it loud and clear if you think clay soil is a problem:

Clay soil is fertile soil that conserves moisture!

Clay soil is good soil, native European plants love it and so do many other trees.

Relatively few plants like really waterlogged soil.
Clay soil becomes waterlogged more easily than other soils and can collect water in certain places, like basins or low lying ground, but really in most places it’s fine to just plant into it.

When water sits in puddles for a long time after rain, one way to break surface water logging is to dig one or more soakaways or sumps.

These are a  lot of work, so it’s good that they do work.
Put them in first and use the soil that comes out to build ridges to plant into.
Clay is good for shaping into raised mounds.

In upland areas, clay soil’s ability to preserve moisture is a good thing – it works well with mulch fabric.

Transplanted hedging and trees survive best in clay soils – it’s plants on drier and sandier soils that need more watering in hot summer.

Long Term Years of Improving Clay Soil:
People who want to really improve the drainage in a plot of clay land each early winter will double dig it over with manure and lime, leaving big bare sods of clay on top, exposed to the frosts over the winter.
This can be covered in mid spring to dry off for digging with more manure and sowing with green manure fertiliser plants.