What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
An overgrown fruit tree can be saved, but not in a single day. The three-winter plan for old apple, pear, and cherry trees.
The walnut bleeds in spring and is only pruned in late summer, while the sweet chestnut is tough and forgiving. Training, deadwood, and timing for all three nut trees.
Why cherry, apricot, and mirabelle are pruned in summer, which wood they fruit on, and how you avoid gummosis and silver leaf.
The pear grows steep and ages fast, the quince blooms at the tips of new shoots. Here's how to read their fruiting wood and prune both right.
Apple in February, cherry after harvest, walnut in late summer: why every fruit tree has its own pruning time, and which wood it bears on.
Bypass secateurs, geared loppers, a pull saw and a pole pruner: what pruning really needs, where the cut belongs on the branch collar, how heavy limbs come down in three cuts, and why the wound sealant stays on the shelf.
A hand-long twig turns into a fruiting fig tree. Here is how to propagate your fig true to type from hardwood cuttings in winter, green cuttings in summer, or layering.
Lots of blossom, hardly any fruit: we walk through the most common causes one by one, from a missing pollination partner to late frost, nitrogen and biennial bearing, so you can find the right one for your tree.
Wormy plums are almost always the work of the plum moth. Once you understand its two generations and flight periods, you can cut the damage sharply with a pheromone trap, a trunk band and autumn hygiene, entirely without chemicals.
