A NEW kitchen garden

Martin Fish is getting down to plenty of picking and planting on the garden veg plot, while Jill is rustling up something pepper-licking good!

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The newly planted 'fredge', which is essentially a fruit tree hedge, has established very well considering the bare root trees weren't planted until April. Plenty of water at the start, followed by rain through the summer encouraged some strong new growth. The trees are planted around 60cm (2ft) apart and the aim is to train the mixed apples and pears as cordons that will eventually grow together to form the 'fredge'.

In theory I could do this in just a couple of seasons as the extension growth is long, but I want to create short fruiting spurs that can be extended a little each year until after four or five years they meet with their neighbour. This will provide lots of fruits and the spurs will give the trees structure and character in the winter when the leaves have fallen.

September is the perfect time to start the spur pruning process and it's simply done by pruning all the sideshoots back to just a few buds from where they grew. The main, vertical top shoot also needs trimming back to the required height, which in this case is around 1.8m (6ft). The reason it's done now is because growth has really slowed down, and no new extension growth will be made this season. The short growths that are left after pruning become the spurs on which blossom and fruit will develop next year.