Fruit tree growing

About this website

This website presents a lot of information about growing fruit trees. But at this moment in time, we would like to highlight the section focusing on how to keep old trees healthy and productive. Today, more than ever before, it is well worth looking after existing older fruit trees in the garden or allotment. Fruit, essential for good health, is likely to become more expensive in the coming years, due to Brexit and Covid-19. It takes 4-5 years to bring a new tree into reasonable production, and so it makes sense to look after older trees as they are already capable of producing good crops, with the right care. Older fruit trees are larger and so take up more CO2, contributing to a healthier environment. There are ways of looking after trees over 30 years old to keep them in production. Read our article and discover the 6 main points to maintain fruit trees at a manageable size.

Consulting and fruit tree sales

Dan Neuteboom, the author of all the material on this website, provides tailored advice on care, renovation and pruning of fruit trees, remotely, or with an on-site visit for locations in East Anglia, for gardeners, large estates, architects, estate agents, property developers and various government organizations. Over the course of his career, Dan has developed in-depth knowledge of fruit trees both in garden orchards and in large-scale commercial orchards. Some reader opinions are visible on our customer comments page.

For projects involving new trees to be planted, we work with a few selected top-quality nurseries, and so once the varieties and numbers of trees have been defined, we can put you in contact with the appropriate fruit tree supplier.

Just send a message by email (enquiries@realenglishfruit.co.uk) or using our web contact form, and he will provide an estimate for the solution. Please send a few photos of the site and the fruit trees concerned.

Growing quality fruit trees

This website presents information on the entire spectrum of fruit trees for the garden:

• advice on which trees to plant
• advice on how to plan a new garden orchard
• planting fruit trees
• how to deal with fruit tree diseases
• pruning fruit trees
• thinning
• training fruit trees as espalier, fan, cordon or stepover
• and much more.

Use the menu at right or top, or the site map below (scroll down) to find the topics you need.

Why is the website called www.realenglishfruit.co.uk? Because there is a difference between the fruit that you find in your supermarket, and the fruit that you could grow in your garden. Wherever you live, there will be certain varieties best suited to local conditions, and these will deliver the best taste, texture and succulent juiciness. We can recommend the right varieties of apple, pear, plum, greengage and cherry. So you can grow your own real English fruit. That’s why we are realenglishfruit.co.uk. Not supermarket.fruit.uk!

Fruit tree care August 2021

We are now halfway through the month of August and the ripening of plums and greengages is not far off. Here in the East of England, we will be picking the early ripening varieties within a matter of days. The size of the plums is very good. Due to the vigorous wood growth, we are finding quite a lot of fruit splitting on the earlier varieties. Another notable feature in our area is less trouble with wasps this year. This is probably connected to the fact that in early spring we had a long cold period with frequent night frosts. The reduced wasp numbers will make harvesting the plums a much more pleasant job.

Bacterial canker and blossom wilt are very noticeable this year on plums and apples prone to blossom wilt. This is no longer easy to control now, as Bordeaux mixture is no longer available. We know that the infection rate is very high in the winter months. It is therefore best to carry out any pruning of plum trees that may be necessary, as soon as the crop has been picked. This will give the trees a chance to heal the wounds before late autumn. The infection rate by fungal spores will therefore be lower.

On apples this year, woolly aphids are found particularly frequently. There is an amazing difference between organically-grown trees and trees which have had a full spray programme of various insecticides. The predators in the organic orchards have been able to keep the woolly aphids under control, while in the sprayed orchards this is often not the case. In the area of pesticides, much more work needs to be done to ensure better protection of the natural predators that appear in the orchards during the growing season. Progress has been made, but more needs to be done. I have been summer pruning an orchard in a village close to us. These trees are 40 years old, have a full crop of fruit and have never been sprayed with any fungicides or insecticides during the last 20 years. The owner of the orchard makes sure that throughout the growing season, there is a large circle around the trunks without any grass. Instead, in that area he grows an attractive mixture of various flowers to please his wife. My estimate is that his fruit crop will grade out to be 85% in the top grade. I think that that is a fantastic achievement. Particularly as the lower grades of his fruit are used for various types of fruit juice, sold in the local shops.

Click here to read all our fruit growing tips for August.

Video channel

The videos published on this website illustrate the critical stages of fruit development, from the period from blossom to fruit formation, in a chronological sequence throughout the year. Click here to see the videos currently available.

Watch a video tutorial about how to prune a Josephine de Malines pear tree.