Medlar

Set bare-root medlars out any time from late autumn to early spring while they are leafless; container trees can go in year-round but establish best planted in winter. Choose full sun and shelter, deep well-drained fertile soil, and leave at least 5m from other trees and buildings. Keep the graft union about two inches above the soil line and stake the young tree so the union does not snap. A dormant tree moves with no leaves to support, so the roots get a full spring to establish before the canopy makes demands on them, and a buried graft union lets the scion root and lose the rootstock's dwarfing effect.

Prune while dormant in winter, training an open-centred goblet like a young apple or pear. Take out dead, crossing and rubbing wood and any suckers coming from below the graft, then stop. Do not shorten the small side-shoots, and resist tidying the zigzag branch structure. Medlars are tip-bearers - the fruit forms on the ends of short side-shoots, so every shoot you head back is a fruit you removed before it existed. Dormant cuts also heal without feeding the sappy regrowth that summer pruning provokes.

Spread a 5-7.5cm layer of garden compost or similar organic matter over the root area in late winter or early spring. Leave a clear gap of bare soil right around the trunk base. A regularly mulched medlar generally needs no fertilizer at all - the decaying organic matter feeds it and holds the soil moisture this shallow-rooted tree wants. Mulch piled against the bark traps damp and rots the collar.

Skip feeding a mulched medlar. If harvests have been poor or the foliage shows signs of nutrient deficiency, apply a granular general fertilizer over the root area in early spring as growth resumes. Medlar is undemanding and a routine feed mostly buys soft leafy growth instead of fruit, so the mulch is the default and fertilizer is the exception you reach for on evidence.

Water newly planted medlars regularly whenever it turns dry through their first growing season, and keep watering young trees during prolonged dry periods for a couple of years after that. Established trees need no extra water. A tree planted this year has a root ball no wider than its pot and cannot reach the moisture an established medlar draws on, so a dry summer stalls it exactly when it should be extending roots.

Wait until the leaves have coloured and the tree has taken a frost or two, then pick the medlars while they are still rock hard, bitter and inedible. Lay them out in a single layer on trays with the stalks facing up, not touching, somewhere cool, dark, frost-free and airy like a garage. In two to three weeks they turn soft, dark brown and wrinkled - that is bletted, and now they are sweet. A medlar is astringent on the tree and only palatable after bletting, an internal breakdown that starts at the fruit's core and converts the tannins into a date-and-cinnamon sweetness. Frost exposure before picking speeds it along.

Through a wet season, watch the foliage for small dark spots with grey centres that merge until leaves yellow, brown and drop early, and for dieback at the shoot tips. Once the leaves are down, rake up and remove all fallen leaves and debris from under the tree, and cut out the dead shoots during the winter prune. Diplocarpon mespili overwinters in the fallen leaves and dead twigs beneath the tree - spores from that litter are what start next spring's infections, so clearing it is the whole control.

After picking, check the tree for rotted fruit that has dried and stayed on the branches as a hard mummy, and for rotted windfalls underneath. Pull every mummy off, gather the rotted drops, and bury them at least 30cm deep or take them off site. Prune out infected spurs. Netting against birds reduces the wounds that let the rot in. Monilinia survives the winter inside those mummified fruits and in the cankers they sit on, and releases the spores that infect next season's fruit. The fungus can only enter through a wound, so bird and insect damage is what opens the door.