It’s tree planting time and apart from being good for you, fruit trees are also easy to grow. They can be divided roughly into two groups – stone and non-stone.

Non-stone are things such as apples and pears, and you might be interested to know these are called ‘false fruits’, as the real fruit is found inside in the form of the seeds.

The fleshy outer that we enjoy is simply an encouragement to passing animals to eat the fruit and scatter the seed. The birds and small mammals do the job as required – and don’t we know it when a mini-forest sprouts where we don’t want it!

There is a new apple that is being hailed as the new ‘Garden Cox’. Cox’s Orange Pippins can be notoriously fickle so anything would be welcome. This one is called ‘Christmas Pippin’ and it is a very promising substitute. It has been grown successfully all over the country and it seems to have a long cropping season as well.

If you have a wet soil, then you can do no better than a cultivar named ‘Red Devil’. It is scab and mildew resistant but has a short cropping season. Another that tolerates wet soils is ‘Scrumptious’ which also has blossom that is resistant to frost.

Red-fleshed apples are becoming a bit of a ‘thing’ as well. ‘Rosette’ is derived from the popular ‘Discovery’ apple and one called ‘Tickled Pink’ is a cooker and an eater, and what a great name!

For purely cooking apples, there’s always ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ but remember that it is a triploid, meaning it needs two pollinators around the area to do its thing properly. One that is suitable for cold and/or wet areas and is self-fertile is ‘Lord Derby’, which resists scab, canker and mildew.

On the pear front, I am a fan of ‘Williams Bon Chretien’, raised in 1770 and one of those pears that is not grainy. Another such gem is ‘Doyenne du Comice’ and one of its offspring, ‘Concorde’. Some pears are self-fertile, others are not so it pays to do your homework.

For ‘stone fruits’, think cherries, plums, greengages, damsons, apricots, nectarines and peaches. These last three need a sunny, warm and sheltered wall to do their best. It is also a good plan to cover the emerging blossom with transparent plastic to stop it from being damaged by rain or frost.

Back to cherries – the birds will have the lot if you don’t protect at least some of the tree. Good eating cherries are ‘Stella’, ‘Sunburst’ and a new one, ‘Summer Sun’. For cooking, go for ‘Morello’.

In the plum/damson/gage camp are ‘Jubilee’, which has large fruits, ‘Marjorie’s Seedling’ which is disease resistant, ‘Merryweather’, sweet enough to be a dessert fruit, and ‘Old Green Gage’, which is sweet and rich.

By the way, those flat-shaped peaches that look like you should be able to skim them across the incoming tide are known as peento, the most popular one being called ‘Saturne’. Stone fruits are categorised in taxonomic circles as ‘drupes’ – see, you learn something everyday!