fruit bushes in morrisons - £2 each

As it says above, morrisons supermarket have fruit bushes in for £2 each.

Today I got 2 raspberry, 1 blueberry and 1 kiwi!!! Yes a kiwi bush?! I'm intrigued!

Can I expect any fruits this year or would this year be a growth year then possibly next year fruits?

 

Raspberries may fruit this year, depends if summer or autumn fruiting, not sure on others.

 

The kiwi is probably best trained like a grapevine....single stem trained up to horizontal wires between two hefty posts, then one stem trained to left, one to right. It does take time, though. Best to get the framework sorted before allowing them to fruit!

 

Too hot here for good raspberries but I put in lots of blackberries which do well here. Last spring I put in some Kioa and Prime Jan plants I got marked way down at end of planting season, half dead, and they spent a wile recovering and now are thriving. I really look forward to pies.

I also got some sickly blueberry bushes last spring which just sulked and never did anything but survived. I did a ph test in January and found the ground was 6.7, way too high! I dug them up and replanted them in raised beds I built with salvaged wood and composted oak leaves with sulfur mixed in to get the ph down to 5 or below. That is working, but radically changing ph is a slow process - they are doing vastly better and have small berries now.

 

weve had a Kiwi in the garden since last year - grew well up the fence - looks to survived the winter (its coming into leaf) don't expect any fruit from it weve grown it more as a novelty

 

There are sometimes live fruit bushes in the pound shops, and sometimes in Wilkos at 3 for a fiver.

As a related aside, a very wise gardener once told me that black currants root as easily as willow, so this year, having a black currant bush that had some misbehaving stems (crossing other stems) that I had to cut off, I simply shoved them into the ground as I would with willow cuttings. I'm pleased to report that when I checked today, there was significant healthy growth on them, so I guess that's cheaper still

 

Same with blackberries - bend down a stem and bury it - another plant in no time. Here our native blackberries are ground cover that is sparse and usually will not get over a foot and a half tall, not too thick. It is a viney, incredibly spiny thing. The berries are not very sweet or large, although still good because black berries are the King of berries - to my taste anyway.

(And I just learned the correct word is spine for blackberries because they are a point growing from the epidermis rather than a 'thorn' or actual part of the plant's wood forming a point.)

I have Kioa and Prime Jan thorny ones, and Navaho thornless verities growing. (although should be called spineless)

well I got that wrong. Thorns are from branching so woody, spines from leaf tissue, and prickles from epidermis (rose) Blackberry are spines though.