Fruit: River Cottage Handbook No.9

For my mum

Contents

Growing your own Fruit

Fruit A–Z

Sourcing & Creating your Plants

Planning, Preparation & Planting

Caring for your Plants

Growing in Containers & Under Cover

Recipes

Useful Things

It’s no secret that I’m an absolute fruit fiend. I revel in the stuff, I am in awe of its utter deliciousness and its evolutionary neatness. If one food was designed, unambiguously, to be eaten, then surely it has to be fruit. We consume it, we spread the seed, more fruit grows, everyone’s happy. It’s in Nature’s best interests to make it as enticing as possible and she’s certainly done so. Fruit is a real treat that often needs no embellishment and is resoundingly, unequivocally good for us. Mark Diacono’s first River Cottage handbook, Veg Patch, was a joy: a thorough, yet accessible guide to raising homegrown produce that has established Mark as one of the foremost thinkers and writers on the subject of growing what you eat. Now he’s turned his attention to fruit and, as you’re about to discover, has written another confidence-inspiring, anxiety-reducing little gem... or perhaps that should be little peach.

It’s no mean feat, because getting people to grow their own fruit presents particular challenges. In many ways it’s the last frontier of domestic horticulture. While there’s been a revolution in the growing of vegetables and herbs in the UK in recent years, home fruit growing has lagged a little behind. I suspect this is because there’s a certain air of mystery attached to growing fruit, a sense that specialist knowledge and hard-won skills must be acquired before one can make a go of it. Also, being that much more delicate and squashable than a celeriac or a carrot, a raspberry or a plum can appear to need rather more cosseting. In his gardening courses at River Cottage, I’ve seen Mark banish these myths and give people the confidence to start producing their own berries, apples, plums, melons and apricots. This book, I know, will do the same thing. As Mark explains, fruit wants to grow – you just have to let it – and he’s here to show you how.

It’s a common mantra – and how could I not endorse it – that we should all be eating fruit every day, ideally several times a day. It is one of the easiest ways to add goodness, sweetness, colour and flavour to our diets. More than any other food, it makes us feel good in body and soul. Yet so often our fruit hails from far afield, cling-wrapped and air-freighted from some tropical clime, or super-chilled in little plastic punnets and transported from the far end of the country. I’m not about to advocate that we all give up bananas and oranges, but there are so many fruits that can grow successfully in our own backyards, and I think we should give them precedence. Buying seasonal British fruit from a local farm shop, a pick-your-own farm or a good greengrocer is a very sound choice. But there is no more sustainable, and no more pleasing way to put fruit on the table than to grow it yourself.

I believe that everyone should have some fruit growing within their reach, for at least part of the year. You don’t even need a garden to achieve this: a couple of blueberry bushes in a big pot on a patio, or a window box of alpine strawberries, is easy to maintain and delightful to plunder. If you have even a small garden, you can do much more: tiny plots can foster small, but very productive fruit trees, as well as compact currant bushes. Your location needn’t hold you back either. In fact, as Mark points out, the urban or suburban gardener often has an advantage over the rural dweller when it comes to fruit growing. A sun-trap patio or roof garden can provide a microclimate where nectarines, apricots or greengages will flourish much more readily than they would in a windswept country acre. If you have anything approaching a regular-sized veg patch you can easily produce more fruit than you can immediately eat: a moderate garden can comfortably support a plum, a pear and an apple tree, plus several soft fruit bushes. Providing you get the hang of storing apples (not difficult, as Mark explains), and if you have a freezer, this can give you fruit from the end of May until well after Christmas.

In the first instance, I hope you will greedily peruse this book as one would a menu. Feast your eyes on the many different varieties of fruit that can be grown in this country and then think about the ones that appeal most to you. Mark’s perennial advice, which I heartily second, is that you should only grow what you like to eat. But with that in mind, you may want to ask yourself: are you sure you know what you like to eat? Or, to put it another way, keep an open mind, and an open mouth! It’s easy to dismiss a lot of fruit – even strawberries, plums and pears – if you’ve only ever tried one bland, under-ripe supermarket variety. But a sun-warmed ‘Royal Sovereign’ strawberry or a perfectly ripe ‘Doyenne du Comice’ pear could completely change your mind.

And if you think you don’t like apples, I’d have to suggest that you simply haven’t met the right apple for you yet. There are hundreds of varieties to choose from. I’m a bit of an apple fascist myself, favouring the crisp and the sharp – nothing soft, woolly or too sweet for me – so I grow the delectable ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’ in my garden, as well as ‘Orleans Reinette’, ‘Blenheim Orange’ and ‘Lord Lambourne’. I’m lucky to have the space to do that, but it’s possible now, through the wonders of modern grafting techniques, to have an apple tree which produces up to four different varieties of apple. You could produce Cox’s, Bramleys, Russets and, dare I say, ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’, all on one bit of tailormade rootstock.

I reckon there’s a latent fruit grower lurking in all of us, even if we don’t know it yet. This book, shot through as it is with Mark’s customary ‘just do it’ attitude, will surely release it. Never one to let the grass grow under his feet, or to beat around the (gooseberry) bush, Mark demonstrates that fruit growing is neither an arcane science or a hopeless fantasy, but an entirely do-able and unbelievably satisfying undertaking that will enrich your life, and your diet, in untold ways. So never mind the skin and pips – they’re all part of the pleasure – just take a big bite of luscious, fruity flesh, and let the juice trickle down your chin.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, East Devon, May 2011

The taste of homegrown juicy peaches, aromatic plums, crisp bright early apples and the sweet-sharp of the summer’s strawberries are, I promise you, some of life’s richest pleasures. The depth of flavour, scent and succulence that comes with your own fruit, enjoyed in the garden that grew it, is so far from the fruit you can buy that, once tasted, you’ll be reluctant to go back.

You’ll find yourself trying to squeeze in a currant here, a berry there or a fan-trained tree against a wall. Even a few pots of fruit can open a whole world of flavour that’s exclusive to the home grower. Mulberries, Japanese wineberries, damsons and medlars are rarely, if ever, in the shops. Even apples, the commonest of the tree fruit, can be a revelation grown at home as you can take your pick from thousands of varieties to suit your taste buds and your location.

And if you get it right you can enjoy something different every month: forced rhubarb from March, stone fruit, berries and currants in the summertime, through to autumn with the late ripeners – grapes and figs among them – and into winter with quince, medlars and the stored-to-ripen apples and pears.

Add to that the pleasures of preserving some of those flavours in jams, chutneys, leathers, syrups, vodkas and vinegars and you’ll be enjoying your own fruit for months, if not years ahead.

Flavour isn’t the only reward. You may find that the fruit you pick isn’t so much the whole point of growing it as one of a chain of pleasures that comes along the way. The medlar’s lazy flowers, the house-filling perfume of ripening quince and the shock of cherry blossom across a tree in spring lift the soul as much as any ornamental plant.

Starting up can be more costly with fruit than it is for vegetables. There are trees and bushes that you may wish to buy, some tools too, but most fruit plants deliver for years and investment now will save you a fortune over time. After the initial outlay you’ll be in for virtually free harvests year after year. Fruit is generally expensive to buy and growing your own insulates you against rising prices, while giving you the finest fruit there is.

Fruit is a longer game than veg, so take time to consider what you’re planting. You can always drop vegetables after a summer of fun but with fruit it’s marriage. Planting a bush or a tree makes a statement – it says I’m here and I intend to stay... or at the very least, I’m here and I care enough about those who follow to plant this tree. You choose, plant and care for something that could be with you for years, generations even.

It’s not one-way traffic though. Grow some fruit and we are, of course, falling for the oldest trick in the book. Like most plants, a fruit plant produces seeds in the hope of succeeding in its one true aim – to replicate itself. If all those seeds fell in the shade of the parent’s branches, the competition and lack of light would doom most to failure, so plants have developed strategies for getting the seeds further afield. Some use the wind, others hitch a ride on the fur of passing animals, while many produce a delicious coating around the seed which entices wild animals and us humans to tuck in. We devour the fruit largely oblivious that it is at its peak of delicious ripeness precisely because the seed is in the ideal state for travel. We sink our teeth in and the discarded or excreted seeds make it beyond the umbrella of the plant. It is the perfect bribe and everybody wins.

Fruit is naturally low carbon. Almost all fruit plants are perennial – they grow and produce year after year rather than being sown afresh every spring as most vegetables are. There’s no need to buy fresh seed nor cultivate the soil each year, and once the plant is established it has the engine room below ground and above to get on with growing quickly when the starter’s gun fires in spring.

Where a veg patch needs constant input, most fruit gets by with minimal care. As a result, perennials are much more capable than annual plants of growing well without man-made fertilisers. This is an important point. Our reliance on fossil fuels is the major cause of climate change and the way we feed ourselves accounts for almost a third of our carbon footprint. So reliant are we on the man-made fertilisers (made with vast quantities of oil and water) and so extended is the supply chain from plot to plate that for every unit of energy we gain from our food, we use 10 units in growing it and getting it to our table.

Growing fruit also offers a more secure food supply. Ninety per cent of the fruit we eat in the UK is imported. If that doesn’t shock you or you think that figure may be comprised mainly of exotic fruit that we are unable to grow for ourselves, bear in mind that three-quarters of our apples – a fruit perfectly suited to growing in our climate – come from overseas, while many of our orchards stand with their fruit unharvested. It’s an extraordinary state of affairs and one that leaves us vulnerable to shortages and rising prices elsewhere, especially when most of the chemicals and energy we use to grow fruit in the UK is also imported.

Growing your own fruit may seem insignificant in the face of such global issues, but it is millions of tiny votes cast every day when we shop that has given us such a carbon-heavy food supply. Each time we grow a little it is a vote for a future which has a local, low-carbon diet at its heart. And local doesn’t get any more local than homegrown.

‘Local’ even tastes better. Of the thousands of apple varieties we can feast on, we make do largely with a handful of long-life so-so favourites, such as Fuji, which can last for 6 months with refrigeration. Symmetrical and unblotched, they are visually seductive, they even taste ok, but when there are so many outstanding apples out there, why settle for ok? It’s a similar story for pears, plums and many others. Local varieties suit local conditions and they tend to do well without chemical inputs, while adding biodiversity value and character to the landscape. It’s a winner on every level.

Of course we can’t hope to grow all the fruit we eat, but growing what best suits our soils and climate, while still trading for the lemons, oranges and other exotics that can’t be grown (at least sustainably) in this country, has to be part of how we feed ourselves in the future. And you planting some fruit is a real step towards it.

This is a food book, driven by how we use fruit in the kitchen. It wasn’t written in Pedants’ Corner. You know what makes a fruit a fruit and a vegetable a vegetable – and tomatoes are most definitely not in this book. My aim is to help and encourage you to grow some fruit and to make the experience as trouble-free and delicious as possible. I could have happily written a book for each fruit but what you have in your hands is a guide to what you have to do, some of the important options and as much personal experience as it seems sensible to impart.

I have offered you a few ideas of what to do with each fruit to get the best out of them in the kitchen, plus some recipes which are happily adaptable to many other fruit. Do nose around on the internet, speak to allotmenters, gardeners and nursery owners, and follow a few bloggers who are out there doing it for themselves. Other people’s experiences is well worth learning from but don’t be afraid to go your own way and experiment if you feel the urge.

We are blessed with living in interesting if challenging times, and for many growing some of what we eat feels like a good thing to do. The wave of interest in doing just that in the last decade isn’t just people looking for an antidote to city life, or a burst of nostalgia – these are people who find that growing some of what you eat enriches your life in many (often unexpected) ways. This is not a passing moment but an enduring movement, the early steps in a more sane and delicious way of eating. The next decades will see individuals, families and communities building on what the pioneers are doing now – allotments, edible back gardens, living roofs, forest gardens, Community Supported Agriculture, village orchards and city farms are just the beginning. And fruit is right at the heart of it.

Essential to life as it is, there is something luxurious about fruit, especially when grown for yourself. Fruit is satisfying to grow in a different way from vegetables, as Jane Grigson observed:

‘This special feeling towards fruit, its glory and abundance, is I would say universal... we respond to strawberry fields or cherry orchards with a delight that a cabbage patch or even an elegant vegetable garden cannot provoke.’

Fruit plants lace the years together, growing along with you and your loved ones. They bring unexpected pleasures. Much as I love my veg patch, there’s a different kind of happiness that comes with seeing the fruit trees I planted when my daughter was waiting to be born that she now plays beneath, picks and eats the fruit from and one day soon will be climbing in.

I hope you’ll grow some.

Choosing what to grow

Deciding which fruit to invite into your garden, allotment or collection of pots is a big decision. The plants may be with you for years and take up a reasonable amount of space. Fruit plants are often costly – that’s not to say expensive in the long term. When you look at likely harvests over the lifespan of the plant, the plant itself is often little short of a bargain, but there is still a substantial initial outlay. There may be a little wait while the plant gets up to full productivity, so you’ll want to be looking forward to its fruit and not disappointed when it arrives. A wish list is vital.

Make a list of whichever fruit takes your fancy. Don’t be hamstrung by practical considerations such as space or climate at this point; you may be surprised by what new varieties or dwarfing rootstocks can make possible. Write down your favourites first, discover some others you like the sound of by reading through the Fruit A–Z, and whittle the list down based on practicalities if you have to.

There are a number of factors I’d suggest you consider when trying to come up with your fruity wish list.

Grow what you most like to eat

This should be a mantra that constantly sings in the back of your mind when planning what to grow. Grow some of your favourite food and you’ll look forward to every harvest time, success will be delicious and any expense or effort along the way will feel worth it. Don’t feel compelled to