FRUIT trees can provide a year-round harvest if you plan well what you plant. PHOTO SHERYN DEAN
AUTUMN is now upon us and while most are hoping for an Indian summer, the reality is the annual great time for harvest isn’t happening this year.
Still, now is a good time to look at garden planning and this week, fruit trees are a good place to start.
While many of the stone fruit varieties aren’t ready to plant until winter, this is the time of year when ordering them from your local garden centre or supplier is a necessity if you are after specific types.
The beauty of fruit trees and bushes is that if well planned, you can have fresh fruit all year round on a quarter acre or less section.
In this amazing graph of Sheryn Dean’s (above), you can see at a glance what will grow when in the Waikato region, and when it will be ready to harvest.
So if you are looking to have fruit for much of the year, you have choices between varieties that will fruit all year such as mandarins or lemons, through to walnuts which will drop their precious cargo in April.
There are some things you have to note – how much room will they need, for example. In the case of figs and walnuts, keep them rooted in a 44-gallon drum to keep them from reaching the heady heights they are capable of. For others, you can use large containers and keep the trees pruned back – dwarf varieties don’t always give a reasonable crop and often, if planted out, will revert in a few years to a full-grown parent tree.
Some will need pollinators in order to fruit, and some can be triple grafted. What this means is you can have apples or pears (pip trees seem to take to this best) which have two or three different varieties grafted on; some will be early harvest, some late.
You can also espalier many fruit trees along a wall or fence line.
I’ve kept citrus trees at manageable levels in drums for five or six years because young ones don’t tolerate frost well and I can move them to a sheltered spot while young. I have also kept five blueberry bushes in large containers that fruit well each year.
So now is a good time to do some research into what your preferences are, the best disease and pest-free varieties you can buy, and what you may need to do to get the best from them.
Just remember, make sure you know the height to which they usually grow, and how much canopy line they take at full growth, along with working in what you might already have.
