Stocking up on raspberries.

Last year we bought thirty new raspberry canes – ten each of Glen Moy - early, Glen Ample – mid season and Glen Magna – late summer. Just as with the strawberries we wanted to try and make sure that we had raspberries for as long a season as possible. As well as being delicious unlike strawberries, raspberries freeze really well too so that’s an added bonus.

We already had a couple of autumn fruiting varieties that have been growing for ages now, Fall Gold or All Gold (it seems to have two names!) which as you can guess from its names has yellow fruit and Joan J (which is really not doing very well – I think it suffers from being planted in the shadow of Fall Gold).

Another raspberry that we planted last year was Glencoe a purple raspberry which is quite unusual as it grows more like a blackberry than a raspberry. You only need one plant as it forms a clump of long vigorous stems. It produced lots of fruit over a long period of time last year.

When the new canes arrived just as this year the conditions were not really good enough for planting and so they were healed into a large pot and kept in the garden greenhouse away from the worst of the weather.

The Glen Ample raspberries in spite of being new produced a reasonable amount of really delicious berries and the Glen Magna although not as good as Ample grew well and also produced a small crop. That left the Glen Moy canes which were a disaster – not one grew.

Glencoe was cut back in the same way as the summer fruiting varieties but the new canes were so long that they needed to be supported.

So here’s hoping for a good crop of multi coloured raspberries this season. Can’t wait!

If you are interested I’ve written more about how we prune our raspberries here

We had bought the canes from Keepers and so I emailed them to ask if we had done anything wrong when planting them and received a reply saying that the very bad weather had caused quite a lot of casualties and that if I let them know how many and which variety of plant had died they would replace them at an appropriate time. This wouldn’t be until the next growing season.

Anyway true to their word last month a couple of bundles of replacement canes arrived. One bundle of Glen Moy and a couple of Glen Magna canes. Just as last year the conditions are too wet to plant so hopefully this batch will survive in the greenhouse. They have been heeled in, in a large pot of compost – the method which worked for the other varieties last year.

Must say yet another supplier who has offered good service! Surely our luck can’t hold out for much longer!

We are hoping for a really good crop from the raspberries that were planted and survived last year. They sent up some strong new canes. As these varieties fruit on the season before’s canes all the old canes that had fruited were cut down to the ground.

The autumn fruiting All Gold are a different proposition as they fruit of the same year’s canes and so once the weather bucks up all the canes will be cut down to ground level. This year I really do need to thin out the new canes as a raspberry thicket is forming.

Update on Nest Box cam: Most days blue tits continue to give the nest box a thorough looking over but as yet no signs of moving in - latest images etc can be viewed from the Bird Box Cam link on the sidebar.