Episode 167: Plan, Plant & Maintain Fruit Trees with Wade Muggleton

Hello and thank you for joining me this week, as I talk to Wade Muggleton, permaculturist, tree expert and author of The Orchard Book, a book about incorporating fruit trees into your garden, however big or small your space. Wade is my favourite type of guest in that he’s written a book based on 20 years of solid experience and he’s busted a few myths along the way, not least the received wisdom around fruit tree pollination. So if you’d like to find out what makes an orchard, when to prune your trees, what types of tree to select, how to underplant your trees, creative tree training, what is a pitcher and what is a chequer, then listen on! Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ear wigglers Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast! What we cover What is an orchard?  What types of tree might one contain? Underplanting orchard trees Keeping the costs down when establishing an orchard Have you heard of chequers? Grafting and over grafting Pitchers Pollination and the need for multiple trees of the same pollination group Creating step overs and fruit tree arches Pruning in summer instead of winter Top types of tree About Wade Muggleton “Wade Muggleton lives in Shropshire with his partner and two children, where their plot, Station Road Permaculture Garden, is a demonstration site for permaculture and opens under the National Open Gardens Scheme. In 2013, he acquired a field and now has a collection of over 130 fruit trees and was featured on BBC Gardeners’ World in 2018.” https://www.chelseagreen.com/writer/wade-muggleton/ Links The Orchard Book: Plan, Plant and Maintain Fruit from Garden to Field by Wade Muggleton - 2021, Permanent Publications