Fall’s a season for planting and eating berries
Does a fresh-picked raspberry taste better early in the morning, when it's still cool from the night air, or at noon, after it's been warmed by the sun?
That's debatable. But there's no argument that few foods are as delectable as raspberries picked at their peak of ripeness, when they're so fragile that they can't be shipped in good condition further than arm's length.
Blackberries, currants and gooseberries are equally delectable, and they're all borne on plants compact enough to grow and look at home in the vegetable or flower garden.
Blueberries are handsome landscape plants — the highbush varieties as stand-alone shrubs, the lowbush as creeping groundcover plants.
A GOOD CASE FOR GROWING BERRIES
In addition to having delicious and diverse flavors, berries are remarkably easy to grow. Pest problems are rare if the plants have a good site and regular pruning.
Blackberries and raspberries, collectively called bramble fruits, grow best bathing in full sunlight. The same goes for blueberries.
Currants and gooseberries are among the few fruits that bear well even in some shade.
All these berries are comfortable in a variety of soils, but they do like their roots kept cool and moist beneath a permanent mulch of wood chips, leaves, straw or other organic material.
PRUNING IS IMPORTANT
Pruning berries is straightforward. Bramble roots are perennial, but individual canes live for only two years, so an obvious first step in pruning is to cut away, in late winter, any 2-year-old canes. Because brambles grow so exuberantly, they could quickly create a dank jungle, so winter pruning also entails removing enough young canes that the plants grow in a swathe no wider than a foot, with about 6 inches between canes.
Some people keep their brambles in clumps rather than rows, in which case you reduce each clump to the best halfdozen young canes.
Blackberries and black raspberries bear fruit on side branches, so they need two further pruning steps. Increase side-branching in summer by pinching out the tip of any young cane when it is 3 feet high. In winter, shorten each of those side branches to about 18 inches long.
Gooseberries and currants bear fruits mostly on 2year-old and 3year-old stems, so grow them as bushes with young stems constantly replacing older stems that you eventually prune away.
Prune lowbush blueberries to the ground every two or three years.