Fruit

Many people ignore one of the best and most handy crops which are fruits and currently the UK can grow some seemingly pretty exotic fruit but is it that exotic as many fruits come in many varieties which can be grown outdoors or in containers or be grown up a wall and simply left until they bear fruit and you benefit from this fruit.
Why fruit? Because many fruits can be grown at home and the less popular fruits can have some unique characteristics from taste to the abundant crops they may produce and often with very minimal work and little more than a small amount of ground and a wall or similar to train them up or along as a fan or espalier and they take up minimal width.

Blackberry, blackcurrant, redcurrant, pinkcurrant, gooseberry, rhubarb, raspberry, strawberry, grapes, figs, loganberries, kiwi, jostaberry, Japanese wineberry, cranberry, Tayberry, and paw paw.

Just a small selection and how many do you know and more importantly, how many have you never heard of and why do you suppose you have never heard of them? Possibly because they are easily grown and sell for sufficiently low prices to make them unprofitable for commercial growers to sell, so they don’t produce and sell them because the profit margin isn’t there. These are not exotic fruits as all of them have varieties which can be grown in the UK and they can come as stems or canes, ground, and supported climbing plants and little more than an annual prune and regular pruning is needed to keep them in tip top condition and fruiting; and some take less than a couple of hours work every year while some are plant and forget.

Many come as trees growing to massive heights while others may come as bushes which are self supporting and others may come as stems or canes which require leaning up against a wall or other supports and others come as a variety of climbers which can be trained along wires or other supports flat to a wall, so in reality they can be 3D grown and occupy what space you have.

How do you intend using your fruits, do you want them for pies or cakes so do they need cooking or can you cook them, do you want to eat them as they are either with custard or cream or do you want to preserve them by freezing or bottling, so do they freeze or bottle, or do you want to store them as a drink for the longer term, then you make wine from them as this stores as a drink for years or do you simply want to make jam with them.

Are they self pollinating meaning one plant will pollinate itself or does it need another plant of the same type or a pollinator nearby so you rely upon insects such as bees to transfer the pollen from one plant to the other to pollinate it.

Loganberries are a cross between blackberries and raspberries while a tayberry is a cross between a loganberry and blackberry and a jostaberry is a cross between a gooseberry and blackcurrant and the Japanese wineberry is related to a raspberry so an Asian raspberry; in reality many plants grown in one country can also be grown in the UK and generally anything which thrives in Japan will grow in the UK as our climates are so similar.

Some fruits such as strawberries are a nice fruit but also require a lot of work for a relatively small crop which can also be quite fickle to grow and generally require containers to grow in such as a strawberry pot; while thornless loganberries require very little and can take up a tiny footprint but require an espalier type growing where they can be trained flat to a wall or building and derive their space from this by covering the wall and producing mases of fruit. Similarly the humble rhubarb is a ground plant which spreads and takes up a lot of room over time and this needs restricting by planting in a bucket then planting in the ground as this requires regular picking to keep the rhubarb coming throughout its season and you can derive a lot of edible rhubarb for little ground space.

Unless you have a large garden and a lot of space I would suggest steering away from the trees and larger bushes as they may not take up much actual ground space but they can cast large shadows over a lot of your ground and limit or restrict the growth of other plants and unless you have a lot of ground space I would steer away from ground plants which take up a lot of ground. If you get the wild growing plants such as blackberries I would also avoid them as you can go and pick the wild ones and plant another fruit in your garden which better suits you; I would also avoid grapes as I find them a lot of work and generally a faddy plant which require a lot of fiddly work just to get a crop.
For a climbing plant I would suggest a loganberry as they take up minimal ground space and are climbers which can be trained along trellis or wires fastened along a shed or garage wall and this limits their thickness to less than 12” (300mm) wide meaning they can be grown in a narrow border alongside a garage or shed. They require minimal work and produce masses of large fruit and for 1-2 hours work a season you get massive crops of large berries which can be eaten raw or with custard or cream or they can be cooked in pies or made into an excellent jam and store well as frozen or bottled fruits and make an excellent wine so are an all rounder as they come as thornless and can be grown in shade to full sun.

My next choice would be the Tayberry for the same reasons as the loganberry, but I find they are not so nice a taste and they are not quite so prolific a cropper as the loganberry and they are not that good for storage by freezing and both loganberries and tayberries have huge fruit, about twice the size of a standard blackberry.

For a ground crop I would say rhubarb and this is because this is also a prolific cropper and requires little work other than picking it regularly to stimulate more and higher yields throughout the season and it can be eaten raw, cooked alone or with other fruit, bottled and frozen and it makes wine which can be stored for years, so you have drinks.

With a couple of prolific cropping fruits you can have them established and cropping at their best and crops such as loganberries and tayberries like being in the ground for about 3 years before they begin producing their maximum yields and after that they simply produce and this gives you time to store them by freezing and bottling and as you produce more you freeze and bottle more and eat the earliest preserved crops to provide rotation of your fruits and always have a lot in storage. Rhubarb is very similar in respect of cropping and preserving as it too can be frozen or bottled and again you keep freezing and bottling and eat your oldest crop to continually rotate your crops.
Both can be used for winemaking and this is another option to explore as wine is a fermented fruit it is also able to be stored and drinkable after many years and in the event of a global meltdown and sewage being leaked into water courses and contaminating them you have something safe to drink; ask yourself a simple question, why was beer and spirits so popular? Because the water supplies were of poor quality and generally contaminated and cholera was the obvious one to raise.

Fruits to avoid those which take a lot of work and produce smaller crops and while strawberries are nice they require the runners to be regularly removed to prevent taking up the fruits nutrition and the fruit they produce is often variable in quantity and quantity and many varieties cannot be frozen which limits storage ability. In addition they have a short cropping season and require at least two types growing with either early, middle or late cropping varieties and they are more difficult to store over winter.
Crops such as blackberries which normally grow wild should be avoided as if they grow wild why would you take up space growing them when they already grow nearby and you just go and pick them, you would be better just going and periodically feeding the wild ones and save your garden space for something useful to you.

This is why I prefer loganberries as they are large fruits and can be bottled or frozen without problems and I make wine with them so we always have wine to drink, even though I don’t drink and my other half makes jam with them and it lasts a long time, well, that is it would last a long time if I didn’t eat it.

Rhubarb is a classic example of a ground plant which doesn’t take up a lot of room and ideally it needs putting in a bucket before planting in the ground and the more you pick the stems the more stems they produce and you can constantly freeze or bottle it as well as eat it raw or cook it and you can certainly make wine from it so it produces a lot of easily produced wines.

With these fruits they are really plant and forget and they are just there and really ask for very little and produce lots of fruit and this means if you like fruit you can still grow more involved fruits as well as these.