They earn their keep.

Berries and currants certainly earn their place in the grow-your-own garden. After the initial planting the only real attention needed is that some need pruning once a year or in the case of strawberries tidied up. Some need to be tied in to supports or covered with nets to deter predatory birds. They may need watering during very dry weather, (remember what that looks like do you?) and most benefit from a feed. If bushes are grown through weed control fabric with mulch on top very little weeding is needed, otherwise weeds can be kept down by hoeing. After that, pest and disease willing the most labour intensive task is at harvesting time and that is directly linked to how much fruit you grow which in our case is quite a lot! 

The yield is of high value when set against the cost of those small punnets sold in the shops. It's debatable how much money this actually saves you as I doubt that you would buy the equivalent amount of fruit as you harvest. You would need to buy lots of punnets of raspberries to obtain 17 kg of fruit. So you may not actually save money but you do eat a lot more fresh fruit and our freezer is always well supplied with fruit for pies, crumbles and compotes.

So let's take the fruits above one by one.

The thornless blackberry provides a steady supply of large fruits for about two and a half months and what is more there is no pain involved in the picking. We dug up our thorny thug but still have one in a wild patch on the plot in a wildlife area. This is mainly left to the birds and any other passing blackberry loving wild creature but we are sometimes tempted to pick the shiny berries.

The blackcurrants always seem to do well and in spite of the blackbirds flying out of the bushes when we approach, they never seem to take too many and there is plenty for all of us. The total harvest could have been higher but we stop picking when we have enough. Each year some bushes have all the old wood removed. I'm too much of a coward to do them all in the same year.

I don't know what it is about our blueberry bushes but they never produce a large amount of fruit. All the conflicting 'expert' advice doesn't help - prune/don't prune, feed/don't feed, don't allow to dry out/don't give too much water etc. etc. The berries that are produced ripen so erratically that what is produced comes in dribs and drabs. I often pick under-ripe fruit to ripen off the plant, otherwise I could miss much of the fruit between plot visits but no doubt the blackbirds wouldn't.

As in the case of the blackcurrants, we could have harvested more gooseberries but we only pick what we can use. Many of the bushes originated as cuttings which we were given and so we have no idea about varieties. The trick is to pick them as they are ripe and sweet but before they drop off the bushes. It's a case of a gentle squeeze and then a taste to determine the ripeness. I still haven't pruned them which is important to avoid mildew.

Again we just picked the jostaberries that we could use. The bushes produced well this year and what was more exceptional was that the wood pigeons left the fruit alone. Often they raid the bushes and break branches in their eagerness to browse the berries. Jostaberry bushes grow quite large and as with the gooseberries I still need to prune them. We only bought one bush but cuttings are very easy to take. We now have six and given quite a few plants away.

The kiwi berry - Issai - vine is growing in a pot in the garden and this year is the first year that we have had a real harvest from the grape sized berries. 

We were harvesting raspberries for four months. The summer fruiting ones were newly planted last year and so we were pleased with the yield. The day on which we stopped picking the summer fruit coincided exactly with the first picking of the autumn fruits. Glencoe is a purple raspberry that grows in a similar way to a blackberry and has smaller fruits and always crops less heavily than the fruits grown on the more usual canes.

We inherited the redcurrant bushes with the plot and so have no idea of the variety. The plants are easily fifteen years old and still going strong. I just cut out some old branches and trim the tops each year. They are one set of plants permanently covered with a net. This means that neither the blackbirds can strip the plants bare nor can Martyn get under to pick them. This means that picking falls to me. I generally just pull the berries off in strings and destring back at home. As with much of the other fruit we could have picked more than we did but stopped when we had plenty. At this stage the netting is pulled back to give the birds a treat, although like contrary children they tend at this point to leave the shiny red fruits alone. When the bushes are covered by netting they will find any weak spot and sneak under.

Most of the strawberry plants were newly planted and so we didn't expect a large crop. The unknown varieties were from old plants that have since been dug up. We left them in the ground until after fruiting to boost what we expected would be a limited crop from the new plants.

The alpine strawberry plants are past their best and will be replaced this year.

Our most thuggish plant is the tayberry. I think we miss quite a few fruits as it is painful picking. It still needs pruning which isn't my favourite job. I think it is due for some harsh treatment this year.

One plant that rivals the tayberrys savage thorns is the Japanese Wineberry. It has been planted a while and hadn't made much growth or produced much fruit in the past but suddenly the canes have taken off, so maybe this year will be their year!

The final berry bushes that we have planted on the plot are the honeyberries which have yet to produce any fruit but having read reviews of the fruit maybe these berries won't live up to expectations.

By the way has anyone grown a chuckleberry and if so would you recommend growing one.

All in all despite the lack of sunshine I have to conclude that last year was a berry good year for us.

By the way if you are interested my picture diary for January is now complete and is here.

  Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett