Another week for gathering soft fruit. Although our strawberry production line has slowed we are still managing to pick to odd punnet and lots of other soft fruit is now ripening. I picked the boxful on the left on Tuesday when it provided us with a really delicious fresh fruit salad - can't get fresher than that.
Alpine strawberries are producing fruit faster than we can manage to pick it. As the plants wear out after a couple of years or so we have sown new seeds and have small plants groing ready to plant out later for fruit next year.
Our second earliest blueberry bush has fruit which is beginning to ripen. The bush that should bear the earliest fruit has just ONE berry! I guess it didn't like the frost when it was flowering. The problem with blueberries is that the berries ripen over a long period and don't last on the bush so to start with you end up picking about half a dozen berries at a time.
Our early raspberries are newly planted this year so won't start fruiting well until next year - we have managed about four raspberries though!The one on the right is Glencoe which has the purple fruit - the raspberries are quite small but that could be the lack of rain or the fact that it too was only planted last year.
We've lots of gooseberry bushes - most are unknown varieties from cuttings taken by us and our plot neighbour. The cuttings rooted so easily that we have ended up with a gooseberry forest. They are all sweet dessert varieties - some red and some green. Deadly to pick but delicious to eat. We do have a couple of bought varieties - one is Pax which lives up to its name and is thornless.
We bought a jostaberry a year or so ago and it grew leggy and so it was pruned back and I decided to try taking cuttings from the prunings. They too rooted easily and so now we have six plants and our plot neighbour has one. This is the first year it has fruited and we like it - not sure how to describe the taste. The plant is a cross between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry and it does have hints of both but doesn't really taste like either.
We inherited these tayberry canes when we took over the allotment although they were a bit wild and didn't produce much fruit - they are now really prolific. We have had problems deciding whether they are tayberries or loganberries but have settled on tayberry - unless of course you know better.
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I desperately need more fruit bushes....another blueberry and i would really like some logan berry canes too. I've never heard of the jostaberry but it sounds intriguing...I will have to keep my eye out for that one.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to try growing 'lingionberries', they are native to Scandinavia and I have had them but you can't buy them here...any ideas where I could get a plant/bush??
So many wonderful berries!
ReplyDeleteI never had any gooseberries (but i have seen them around), and I have never seen or tasted jostaberry.
What is the difference between tayberry and raspberry. They look same to me, only tayberry is larger?
Yep, that's a tayberry. I have both those and loganberries (and raspberries) on my plot. Tayberries are large and long, loganberries are much more like big raspberries. They all taste subtly different from each other but vaguely similar.
ReplyDeleteMy mouth is watering just looking at your pictures, especially the first one.
ReplyDeleteHi Tanya, Thompson and Morgan do a Lingonberry if that is the same thing but it is out of stock. Jostaberries are quite vigorous and can apparently grow to 7' in height.
ReplyDeleteHello Vrtlarica Tayberries are a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry and grow the same as a blackberry.
Thanks Mrs Jones for the confirmation
BW - Just had another mixed fruit salad and it was delicious. Picked more punnets today!
What an amazing plot - I love your blog, its so inspirational depsite making me very jealous - what a harvest! I will definitely be back for more. Thanks:)
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of different fruit you grow. I really should get some more fruit bushes for the allotment. I'm really disappointed that my blueberries got caught by the frost this year, I'm going to move it to the greenhouse when it gets it's flowers next year, just to be on the safe side.
ReplyDeleteHi FRG - Good to have a visit from another Yorkshire girl. Thanks for the comment - I've added your blog to my bloglist so will be keeping an eye on you too. As for the plot it has taken a long time to get it as it is and we did acquire our plots when no-one else wanted them so have space!
ReplyDeleteJo - You have been troubled with frost haven't you? Are your fruits early varieties as our early blueberry only has one berry! We can't move ours as they are growing in the ground. I also know that blueberries don't like to dry out so could that be an issue with yours if it's in a container?
ReplyDeleteWow, what a fantastic harvest! Mouthwatering! One day... one day I will grow this much fruit!
ReplyDeleteHi Nome - I'm sure you will - it just takes a bit more patience to grow fruit doesn't it - the plants need time to settle down!
ReplyDeleteThe worst affected blueberry is Goldtraube, which I believe is a late variety (I might be wrong). I have another but don't know the variety. That one has a few berries on it, so all is not lost. I didn't notice that the containers dried out at all, so don't think that's the problem. I'll move them under cover next year and see if that solves the problem.
ReplyDeleteOoooh Bloooberries. The ones I ordered last autumn arrived in March. They were covered with fleece for the next 4 to six weeks, ...and have yet to produce a flower! But they have grown lots of leaf so I'm not worried. They'll have put their roots down, and provided the frost doesn't take them I'll have berries next year. But it's so helpfull to get an idea of how things are going for other people - and how things can turn out!(The brochure is just infuriating being choc full of berries all the year around!) So keep it up S&M!
ReplyDeleteHI Mal,
ReplyDeleteIt can take a while for blueberries to start producing a good crop.
One thing that is frustrating with them is that the berries seem to ripen a few at a time - if you don't catch them when fully ripe they drop off and shrivel. The good news is that if you pick them before they are fully ripe they ripen off the bush - especially if placed in a bowl witha couple of ripe berries.
We alao feed ours with an ericaceous feed when we remember. The leaves turn a lovely red in autumn.