Monday 4 February 2013

Raspberry Care

I just been looking back at my blog post “Fruitilicious” last year, it’s aboutIMG_0347 how I don’t really have any success with soft fruit or any fruit for that matter!

I was looking back because over the last week I have tied up the raspberries & Tayberry bushes. I have summer and autumn fruiting raspberries and they have to be treated different, as summer fruiting varieties produce there fruit on last year’s new growth and autumn fruiting varieties produce there’s on this year’s growth,

So summer varieties have to have the fruiting stems removed from last year and the new shoots from last year left. How can you tell the difference this time of year?? I hear you all shout… Well I have a simple system really, I tie a peace of garden twine loosely round the stem of the new growth that appears throughout the fruiting season and these don’t get the chop whereas all the others do, you can also tell the difference as the stems that are older don’t look as green but instead look much more woody.And my Tayberries are also treated like summer fruiting raspberries and the old growth chopped back.

IMG_0819     IMG_0820

        Before                                                             After

The autumn fruiting varieties are a lot simpler to sort them all just get chopped back every year.

IMG_08222012 was a funny year for my raspberries as they were not producing fruit when they should be; I have 6 varieties of raspberry’s ranging from Very early to very late giving me a long season. Indeed I was picking raspberries in mid-November last year! But the season didn’t start when it should in fact all the raspberries were a good 5-6 weeks later than they should have been my first raspberries were not ready until mid-July I had quite a good crop though except from the very early variety’s as I think it was just too cold for them to do anything.

My Tayberry was a big flop though I just had 1 berry but my, it was a big juicy one. I am hoping this year will be better.

My strawberries were absolutely brilliant last year the best I have ever had IIMG_0821 would say I had 5-6KG in total and that’s being conservative! I put it down to the preparation I put in the year before I dug them all out and dug in a load of my homemade compost (with my chicken’s poo in it)then put them back only selecting the healthy plants and the young plants also. And I netted them from the start to stop the birds.

I had no joy also with my new pear tree I planted it was looking magnificent in early April but we had a cold snap and all the blossom fell and thus no fruit! Hopefully this year will be kinder to us allotment growers.

11 comments:

  1. It wasn't a good pear year last year - ours had loads of blossom but the immature fruits all fell off. Not one pear.

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    1. thats exsactly what happened to mine lets hope this year is better :-)

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  2. Re the pear tree: is it too big to protect with a piece of fleece? It could make all the difference.

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    1. Hi mark, yes its a dwalf variety, a few people have suggested that to me, think I will give it a go this year thanks :-)

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  3. Hi Stacy
    I didn't have much fruit last year as it was my first year at the allotment, but the strawberries we inherited with the plot did amazingly well even though they were just left to it, no manure, fertilizer etc. I think a lot of it was down to the amount of rain they got, they loved it. I have planted raspberries, loganberries, blackcurrant, gooseberry and blueberries, so fingers crossed they do well this year. I received my seeds this morning, thank you so much!!!!!

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    1. I hope you get a great harvest from the seeds :-)

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  4. Hi Stacy,my raspberries were also late but then also went late into the season.My Conference pear was pathetic last year and actually had blossom on in September!!!,but my Comice pear fruited the best yet!

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  5. Hello - I'm very interested in this because I'm hoping to put in some raspberries this year (with some other fruit bushes for the first time). I'll be hoping for all the right weather conditions to give them a good start!

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    1. I hope you have success with your raspberries

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  6. Nice tip Stacy. :)

    Interesting what you say about the chicken poo. I've never used it on my strawbs, but do spread it around the raspberries. Apparently it contains nitrogen, which the raspberries love.

    My rasps were looking really sorry for themselves, with horrible brown leaves until I found out that this is a sympton of a lack of nitrogen.

    I'm tempted to mulch my strawbs now...

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    1. thanks Jono, its great to share tips and ideas, i am hopfully going to have a bonfire up the plot this week weather permitting and going to spread the ash round the raspberries did this last year also.

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