Berry delicious!
SUCCULENT STRAWBERRIES
MOST people love strawberries and their special summer flavour.
However, that does depend upon them having any flavour at all.
Most strawberries that are commercially produced — and that includes every one you buy in a supermarket or in any kind of packaging – are bred and chosen for their ability to travel well, store well, have a uniform size, shape and colour and to have a good aroma.
When you put them in your mouth there is no taste. It is just watery mush.
But grow your own and you will rediscover the true strawberry, preferably eaten warm from the sun (chilling makes them last longer but removes all but the crudest flavour).
As well as the fragrance, you will have a burst of flavour that remains with you minutes after the berries have been swallowed.
Strawberries grow best in rich, moisture-retentive soil. Lots of sunshine provides a much better flavour but a shady spot will give you a later harvest.
You can buy plants now that will give you a good harvest this summer, but it is best to plant in September so that they can build a good root system for next year.
Be generous with the spacing — they are hungry, sprawling plants and need a minimum 12 in between plants — more if possible.
Strawberry plants need water when the fruits start to appear, but not once they start to ripen and preferably only to the roots as they are very prone to fungal diseases and viruses.
Mulch the soil with straw or cardboard to keep fruits off damp soil.
Mildew is a very common problem. Generous spacing, light and air is the best answer, along with cloches (you can make these from cut- down plastic bottles) to keep foliage and fruit dry if it is wet and warm, especially in June.
Birds love the berries, too, so they must be netted from the first sign of ripening until the last fruit is picked.
Strawberries accumulate viruses so while the second and third years will be the most productive, after three years the plants should be dug up and replaced with the runners taken from secondyear plants.
The easiest way to do this is to select the biggest and healthiest plantlets that are nearest to the parent.
Cut them free on both sides and replant at 12-18 in spacing in a fresh piece of ground that has not had strawberries growing there for at least three years, and then weed out all the remaining runners.
My current favourite strawberry variety is ‘Gariguette’, which is classed as ‘mid season’ (‘early season’ strawberries, as the description suggests, fruit first, and there are ‘late season’ varieties, too).
The point about a strawberry like ‘Gariguette’ is that you are unlikely to buy its berries in a shop because the fruits are only at their best for about a day or two. This is also true of another superb old variety ‘Cambridge Favourite’.
But this is all the more reason to grow them because you hardly ever come across them in a supermarket or even a restaurant. Perpetual or remontant strawberries ripen between July and October, taking over when the conventional summer crops have finished. I grow ‘Aromel’ and ‘Mara Des Bois’, both of which crop well and have a lovely flavour.
WHY I LOVE ALPINE JEWELS
ALPINE strawberries have small, dark, intense-tasting berries that crop continuously from mid-summer to late autumn. They are easy to grow, enjoying shade and rich soil.
Birds tend to leave them alone so netting is not essential. They’re best grown from seed, sown in spring and planted out in summer 12-15 in apart. I grow them beneath hedges where they produce masses of tiny fruits.
IRRESISTIBLE RASPBERRIES
I HAVE to lay my cards on the table here — I much prefer raspberries to strawberries. You often have a dull strawberry but the worst raspberry is always good and the best is sublime!
Raspberries are much easier to grow than strawberries, too, being very happy in cool, damp conditions and growing just as well on a shady fence as in full sun. They will grow in any soil, although a slightly acidic, well-draining one suits them best, so before planting dig deeply, adding plenty of organic material to improve drainage and root run. Do not use mushroom compost with raspberries — it is too alkaline.
The main problem is pruning. There are two kinds of raspberry, summer and autumn fruiting. If you are not sure which you have, make a note of when the fruit appears.
Summer raspberries fruit between the end of June and August, and autumn ones overlap for a week or so in August, but can be picked well into October.
This is the crucial bit: summer-fruiting raspberries ripen on canes that grew the previous year, while autumn-fruiting ones bear their berries on the current year’s growth. So once autumn-fruiting varieties have finished, everything can be cut back ready for the new, fruit-bearing growth to appear the following spring.
With summer-fruiting varieties, once they stop producing berries by late August the old canes that fruited should be cut down, leaving the new green canes standing. These can then be tied into position ready for the next crop.
It means that summer- fruiting raspberries need constant support — thick wire strung between posts is the most effective method, but a trellis or fence will do the job — whereas autumn-fruiting ones grow as loose bushes and only need temporary support with canes and string.
I grow three summer-fruiting varieties, ‘Malling Jewel’, ‘Glen Ample’ and ‘Glen Moy’. My autumn-fruiting raspberries are ‘Autumn Bliss’ and the yellow ‘ Golden Everest’.
BLUEBERRY THRILLS WHY NOT GO FOR GOOSEBERRIES?
RAW, stewed, in a pie, crumble, fool or ice cream, gooseberries are one of my favourite fruits. Luckily for gardeners, they are easy to grow if you treat them right, and the secret of good gooseberries is to treat ’em rough. A gooseberry thrives best on benign neglect. Resist feeding or mollycoddling them but take care to prune them so that plenty of air and light can get to every branch — this will also make picking less of a prickly business. The only feed they should ever have is wood ash from an open fire, if you have such a thing, added around the base in spring. They are even more prone to sawfly than currants, so prune in the same way, as open goblets, and give them an exposed position. This also helps against American mildew which will coat the fruit and leaves with a grey mould. I grow ‘Pax’, ‘Invicta’, ‘Lady Sun’ and ‘Whinhams Industry’.
BE EXTRA KIND TO BLACKCURRANTS
RIBESNIGRUM need special treatment to crop well. But it is worth it because you cannot make summer pudding without blackcurrants and life without summer pudding is an impoverished existence.
Red and whitecurrants and gooseberries are all tough, but blackcurrants must have a choice spot to flourish. They do best on a very rich soil in full sun, so add lots of manure or compost to the ground before planting and mulch thickly every year.
They produce their fruit on new wood rather than two-year-old spurs like gooseberries and redcurrants. In the first year blackcurrants will produce some fruit, then lots in the second year and the crop falls off thereafter. So the pruning regime is designed to refresh each bush by removing the oldest third each year, cutting the stems back to the base straight after the last fruit is collected.
New shoots will grow vigorously. Birds can strip every last berry overnight, so blackcurrants must be netted from the time the berries start to ripen. I drape a net over canes. I grow ‘Ben Loman’ and ‘Ben Sarek’.
HOW TO PROTECT REDCURRANTS
REDCURRANTS will grow in almost any soil and position. The fruit hangs on spurs on two or three-year-old wood so pruning is geared to maintaining a permanent framework of branches.
To deter their biggest pest the sawfly, grow the bushes as an open goblet – ideally on a central stem so that the whole bush is a foot off the ground. In late winter, prune any inward growing branches and reduce new growth by a third so you’re left with the woody frame of a bowl. This exposes the centre of the bush and deters the fly from laying its eggs.