Potting up fruit
I love this time of year for selecting and planting new fruit bushes as it gives me a feeling of the harvests to come next year. With the phenomenal number of new plants on the market this year, it’s been a challenge to decide what to choose. Eventually I opted to have a go at blackberry ‘Black Cascade’ (available from Mr Fothergill’s, www.mrfothergills.co.uk). With its ability to grow in a hanging basket and crop up to 1.3kg (46oz) per plant, I thought it would make a change to petunias and give me fruit to snack on while gardening! The greenhouse is the perfect place to overwinter the small plants and it will also give them a head start next year. The beauty of such a compact plant is you can grow it where you like. I’ve used a mixture of compost, Vermiculite and slow-release fertiliser in a 40cm (16in) basket, as the volume is quite small and blackberries are hungry plants.