Fruit Bushes for Allotments
Fruit bushes are a great item to have on an allotment and in your garden. When purchasing fruit bushes you are best purchasing plants that are a couple of years old not the one year old plants – these will be more expensive but they will be more mature and will fruit better than the new fruit bushes that are cheap and that you find in pound shops. Find out our tips and advice for Fruit Bushes for Allotments here.
There are plenty benefits to having fruit bushes on your allotment. Some of these are that in the shops fruit is extremely expensive to buy especially blackcurrants, redcurrants, blueberries and blackberries. You will get great crops off your fruit bushes if they are looked after and they are maintained well. You will have endless amount of fruit and you can freeze it also – this lets you use it as and when you need it to make those fruit smoothies, pies and crumbles. You will be having fruit all the way through winter if you pick it all and store it well.
You can expect your fruit bushes on your allotment to fruit properly after being in the ground for around a couple of years but they will last decades on the plot. All you have to do is prune them back each year and maybe add some mulch them. Just make sure they are protected from the birds as they will love to come down and help themselves to your fruit you don’t want to waste any of the produce that you have spent time and effort growing.
Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book
Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-
You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.
Planting your Fruit Bushes
When it comes to planting your fruit bushes you need to make sure that you can choose a good location on your allotment or in the garden. Remember when you plant them they will live there forever as it is not good to move them once they have taken root. A great thing to do is once you have chosen your area to plant your fruit bushes cover it with black membrane and plant the fruit bushes through the membrane. This way it will keep the weeds down around the fruit bushes and it will keep the ground moist which the plants will love.
To plant your fruit bushes use a spade and dig around a spade depth, add some organic matter and compost to the hole then plant the fruit bush to the depth of the soil mark which is already on the bush you should be able to see where it was planted originally. Water the fruit bush in well. Keep watering every few days.
Once you have planted your fruit bushes in the ground the ideal thing to do is to build a fruit cage round the bushes or purchase one. This will stop the birds from coming down and eating all the fruit you have grown.
Training your Fruit Bushes
When you are growing fruit bushes like loganberry, blackberry, tayberry you can train them along wires down the sides of your plot so that they don’t take over and grow eveywhere. All you have to do is fasten the fruit canes to the wires as they grow.
When and how to plant
When you are planting fruit bushes you need to be planting them when they are dormant and not growing. This is ideally between November and February. This is so that the plant can take root well with all the rain.
In the first year you need to make sure they are kept watered well and mulched. This will help keep the moist. You also need to keep them weed free so that they are not competing for the nutrients in the ground with the weeds.
Start planning your area where you are going to put the fruit bushes early, get the ground ready and also you can build the fruit cage ready for when you plant them in November.
What Fruit Bushes to grow on Allotment
There are many types of fruit bushes for allotments that you can grow. These are the fruit bushes you can grow on you plot quite easily:-
- Blackcurrents
- Red Current
- White Current
- Blueberries
- Blackberries
- Loganberries
- Raspberries
- Tayberries
- Gooseberries
We hope you have found these tips and advice for fruit bushes for allotments. Check out all the rest of our website for more gardening tips and advice. Subscribe below for our daily newsletter and tips
