Spacing & sowing

Plant spacing

24 ft 9 in

In-row spacing

24 ft 9 in

Between rows

34 ft 5 in

Square-foot density

Not suited to SFG

Growing

Type

Fruit · Perennial

Botanical family

Mixed / other

Sunlight

Full sun, somewhere warm and out of the wind.

Watering

Keep young trees watered; an established one needs nothing.

Feeding

Compost mulch in spring; it hardly needs feeding beyond that.

Frost tolerant

Yes

Flowering

June

Pruning

In winter, take out dead and crossing branches and nothing more.

Through the year

• Apr–Jun Bud Break
• Jun–Jun Flowering
• Jun–Sep Fruit Set
• Sep–Oct Harvest
• Oct–Dec Leaf Fall
• Jan–Apr Leaf Fall

Companions

Comfrey, Clover, Wildflowers

Pests & problems

• Leaf miners Leaf miner tunneling between the leaf surfaces
• Vine weevil Chestnut weevil grubs inside the nuts
• Chestnut blight The disease that erased the American chestnut from four billion trees to almost none. Orange-buff cankers girdle the trunk; the roots live on and sprout, and are struck again.
• Leaf spot Ink disease

Garden allies

Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. ★ companion plant

• Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.
  Hunts Vine weevil

  Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.

• Frogs & toads Anura
  Hunts Vine weevil

  A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.

• Ground beetle Carabidae
  Hunts Vine weevil

  Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.

  Plant nearby LavenderMintThyme
• Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeus
  Hunts Vine weevil

  A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.

• Parasitic wasps Braconidae & Trichogramma
  Hunts Leaf miners

  Tiny, stingless wasps that lay eggs in or on caterpillars, aphids, and moth eggs — the white cocoons riding a hornworm are their calling card, so leave that caterpillar be. Umbel flowers with shallow nectar keep the adults fuelled.

  Plant nearby CilantroDillFennelLovageParsleySweet alyssumYarrow