Sibley’s Patio Trees – A Range of Fruits for Small Gardens

It’s more than fifty years and over three million grafts since I first held a grafting knife in my hands and was captivated by clonal propagation techniques. I marvelled at how a plant with roots would accept what is no more than a small shoot cut from another tree and that in a very short space in time, that shoot would grow and flourish and bear fruits attached to its newly adopted parent. Continue reading →

Potting Up & Re-potting Fruit Trees & Soft Fruits

It is quite possible to grow most fruit trees and soft fruit plants in containers; however to do this you do need to carefully prepare in the same way that you would prepare the open ground before planting out. Unfortunately many people acquire a tree or plant and then just shove it in a pot or container without any thought and that usually ends up with the poor thing hardly surviving or perhaps dying. Continue reading →

A Vigoroot Planter will enable the roots to develop without spiralling

Growing Fruit on the Patio

Although many TV gardening programmes would have you think otherwise a very large percentage of the UK population have a very small garden or perhaps just a patio. This makes those owners of these small spaces wonder what they can grow. My advice is always that you can grow many plants nowadays in containers so why not have a go yourself if the majority of your garden is a patio? For many years shrubs, perennials and even small trees have been grown in containers but – despite a small following – it is only recently that there has been a trend towards growing fruit in containers. Continue reading →