Fruit planting: It’s the perfect time for luscious summer crops

Fiann Ó Nualláin is enthusiastic about soft fruit planting and says canes and bushes should be set now.

Traditionally, March is viewed as the last chance for planting any new, bare-rooted fruits — that’s everything from apple and pear trees to blueberries, gooseberry, quince and currant bushes as well as wild berries and cane fruits including raspberries, blackberries, and all the more recent hybrid berries – tay, logan, boysen.

In part, this is because the dormant season is November-March and come April they are rooting and budding and losing vigour and also because, by April the garden centres and stockists have themselves potted them on, or are in the business of the more expensive container-grown plants.