Use your sunny walls and fences to best effect – our slogan for all gardeners. Planting fan-trained fruit trees will involve a real test of your new gardening skills. Fruits like apples and pears need other varieties nearby to ensure good pollination and fruiting, so unless your neighbours grow these fruits too, choose instead a peach, apricot, nectarine or plum. We screen our far boundary with a hedge, and take another good look at improving our soil.

Needs list: 1 fan-trained fruit tree 4 Cotoneaster simonsii; 1 coil medium gauge wire.

Time budget: 5 hours in 2 weeks

Mid November weather/soil

Dormant season for most plants: nurseries despatch most stock now. Plant when soil is not frozen, not waterlogged. Often a wet month, so note parts of the garden where water collects; make plans to drain them. Badly drained soils can kill plants which would thrive otherwise.

Flower of the Fortnight

There’s an old saying that you plant pears for your heirs. Forget it. With modern dwarfing rootstocks and newer fan-training techniques you can he sure of fruits after only a few years. The pear we illustrate is the world famous ‘Conference’, one of the hardiest, most adaptable and, what’s more, partly self-fertile. You need cross pollination for heavy fruiting, so plant ‘Packham’s Triumph’ or ‘William’s’ to ensure success. Fan train as shown.

In really warm, sheltered gardens, try a peach, apricot or nectarine against the sunniest wall in the garden. If you’ve only got a wall in shade all the time, grow a sour cherry. Keep it fan-trained flat against the wall. Tie in straggly branches.

Groundwork

Check supplies bought in, make sure you have adequate supplies for winter. Moss peat: 2 cwt. (Stages 2, 4, 11, 16 ). Make sure enough remains for digging over beds. Buy more if needed.

Bonemeal: 1 pkt. (Stage 2 and stage 5). Make final application now, around established plants, 4 oz. per yd2. Lawn fertilizer: 1 pkt. (Stage 5). Make last application Stage 15. Start again when grass is growing vigorously in spring.

Liquid plant feed: 1 bottle (Stage 7). For container and indoor plants. Latter are now dormant. Do not feed again until new growth starts next year.

Growing mix: 1 bag (Stage 7). Store, or use for indoor bulbs, plants.

Farmyard manure: 1 bag (Stage 9). Mulch round base of fan-trained fruit trees, climbing/rambler roses. Find or create suitable storage space in shed, garage, crawl-space. Must be dry, cool, secure. Make sure all chemicals-artificial fertilizers, weedkillers, pesticides, insecticides – are out of reach of children, preferably in a locked cupboard. Never transfer chemicals into other containers. Use garage to store bulky materials.

Project work: a fruit tree against a wall; improving your soil

Select the type of fruit you want to grow in your garden: consider all aspects – suitability of climate, soil and position in garden. Then choose a pre-trained tree of the type best suited to your garden – espalier, fan, cordon. The choice is yours. Purchase.

Fix ties before planting. To fix ties, use staples (Stage 3) and wire: make sure wire is taut between staples. Use tighteners if necessary. Soak the roots of the tree in a pail of water for 1 night before planting. To plant, lift turf, dig a pit 2 ft. deep, and at least 18 in. across from wall to outer edge of hole, put 6 in. layer of rubble/bricks/stones at the bottom of the hole.

Make a soilless growing mix heap at the bottom of the hole. Place fruit tree on that and spread the roots away from the wall. Backfill, leaving a length of hose or something similar in position close to the stem (allow room for stem to grow) for irrigation in future. Firm. Soak.

Tie in branches to wires with twine. Mulch with compost.

Next, plant Cotoneaster simonsii along fence. Prepare planting holes as described in other stages, and space the plants 2 ft. apart 18 in. from the fence. Next set about improving your soil. Peat is the key soil improver, a miracle-worker for tired, dusty soils. Dig over any empty ground, adding a 1 in. layer of peat and incorporating it in the top 6 in. of soil as you dig. Just keep on using it all the time.

Use moss peat for mulches, to suppress weeds, use it every time you plant. Peat makes your soil spongier, more moisture retentive, but it doesn’t feed the soil.

So in addition use organic fertilizers – compost, farmyard manure, whatever is available. Seaweed, shoddy, sewer sludge all feed the soil. Find out what is easiest to obtain in your area. For pot-plants use soilless growing mix: give additional feeds with foliar feeds through the leaves. Tip used soilless mixes from pots, tubs, containers on to borders too.