DIG FOR VICTORY

INDISPENSABLE 4-PAGE GUIDE TO GROWING YOUR OWN AT HOME

Starting in last Saturday’s Weekend magazine with vegetables, this essential series will show you just how easy it is to grow your own produce — whatever space you have.

Yesterday it was herbs, perhaps the most straightforward of all edible crops to grow, and today we’re looking at soft fruit.

after the initial panic about loo rolls, pasta and milk, what has become apparent in this crisis is that little treats are valued most. anyone who has had to endure wartime shortages will say that the cravings were never for potatoes, bread or porridge but olives, lemons, raspberries or a martini.

Well, i cannot help you grow martinis but i can certainly tell you how to raise your own luscious soft fruit treats — raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and other delights.

Soft fruit can make life immeasurably richer, whether it’s a bowl of your own strawberries eaten with the warmth of the sun still on them, gooseberry fool, summer pudding, blackcurrant jelly or popping raspberries into your mouth straight off the canes.

Berries are among some of the least troublesome edible crops that can be grown, although i know that some gardeners feel it is a step too far on top of vegetables, herbs and maybe a fruit tree or two.

But you only need a bush or two to have a surprising quantity of fruit.

raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants can all be trained to grow up a fence — and a shady one at that.

Soft fruit is wonderfully decorative too — think of the pearly beads of whitecurrants and tiny, delicate alpine strawberries . . .