HOW TO GROW RASPBERRIES
Anne Swithinbank’s advice for autumn and summer varieties
I’VE never heard of anyone growing more raspberries than they can eat. The berries are delicious raw, while a raspberry tart is a real luxury and the jam is a personal favourite. Easy to please and long-lived, healthy wellgrown plants should yield over 3lb (1½kg) of fruit each for at least 10 years.
When I was a youngster, most gardens boasted a row of summerfruiting raspberries (now also known as ‘floricane’ varieties). Supported by parallel wires stretched between two posts, they fruited bountifully in July – and we always pruned all the old, justfruited canes to the ground as soon as the last berry was picked. Of the new, unfruited canes, the strongest and best placed six-nine per plant were tied in and the rest cut down, making way for weeding and mulching.
Autumn-fruiting raspberries (also called ‘primocanes’), which started to gain popularity during the 1980s, are treated differently. During winter, usually February, all the canes are cut to ground level, and in spring the plants send up new ones. These gradually mature, and they are tied in to supports and ready to fruit the same autumn.
Sometimes, autumn-fruiting varieties (a good subject being ‘Joan J’) are encouraged to produce a double crop. To do this, you select half of the strongest stems per plant in February (maybe seven or eight per yard/metre) and prune the tops down to just below the point where the fruit grew the previous autumn. The rest of the stems are pruned to ground level as usual. The mature stems will fruit in summer, are promptly cut to the ground, and are overtaken by newer stems destined to fruit in autumn.
While this is a useful tactic for those wanting a long season of fruit from a small number of plants, it does take its toll and so you’ll need to compensate by paying close attention to watering, feeding and mulching.