One of the advantages of raspberries, compared to other soft fruits (horticultural speak for berries) is that they can be harvested over a long season. In contrast, nearly all of the other soft fruit I grow has a short season, six to eight weeks at most. For example blackcurrants, are ready from late June to early August, while gooseberries will last only a few weeks longer. With raspberries however, I can usually find fruit to pick from the summer solstice to Halloween unless there’s been an earlier than normal first frost. Strawberries are one of the few other berries that can match this length of cropping, but this is usually only possible through under cover growing or various types of horticultural trickery to induce plants to fruit out of season.
The reason raspberries have such a long season is that there are two distinct types with different cropping periods. The traditional and still more commonly grown raspberry is the ‘summer fruiter’. This crops from mid-June to mid-August in most parts of the UK. There are numerous summer varieties often prefixed Glen or Malling. The former are usually Scottish bred. Scotland, especially the area around Dundee, has a long history of raspberry cultivation. Growing further north, Scottish berries extended the commercial season after crops further south had finished. Additionally, in the past at least, much of the crop was used for jam. That’s the reason Dundee is known for the three J’s: Jam, Journalism and Jute – I’ll leave it to you to consult Google if you want to know the stories behind the other two J’s.
Summer fruiting raspberries produce an abundance of berries but carry these over a relatively short period of three to four weeks. This means, if raspberries are wanted through the summer, several varieties are needed to ensure continuous production. Two varieties, an early and a late cropper may be enough, but as I’m a raspberry addict I grow three making sure there are no picking gaps. If there are too many berries they go into homemade jam – yummy. There are also gate sales: raspberries are popular but you do need to sell quickly as quality rapidly fades in punnets on hot summer days!
Autumn fruiting raspberries, which I’ve been picking now for about three weeks, have an altogether different cropping season and growing habit. Known technically as ‘primocane’ varieties, these produce berries on canes that have grown in the same season. Summer fruiting types, in contrast, produce berries on canes that grew the previous year and stood leafless through the winter. When it comes to the cropping, unlike their summer cousins, autumn fruiters aren’t glut and bust. Berries develop over a longer period giving more modest helpings at each picking. But they keep going. Most varieties will continue to crop from mid-August to early November if the weather is kind. This means there’s no need to have several types for sustained production.
The commonest autumn fruiting raspberry is the long established variety Autumn Bliss. Indeed, for many years this was the only one available for small scale growers apart from the yellow berried, and in my experience weak growing and shy fruiting, novelty variety All Gold. Recently several new red berried types have become available, notably, Polka and Joan J. I’ve grown both of these for several seasons now and found them to be superior to Autumn Bliss. Berry size is better and the canes more robust. Indeed, so superior have these varieties proved that the last remaining Autumn Bliss will shortly be ‘recycled’, chopped up and put on a compost heap. If you grow Autumn Bliss you may also want to give these new types a try, especially if the old canes are ailing like mine. Any raspberry patch, whether summer or autumn fruiting, tends to give poorer quality and less abundant fruit after about ten years.
Another plus of autumn fruiting raspberries is easy management. Pruning is simple. As the fruit is carried on new canes the old ones are simply cut out completely, that is to the base at ground level, in late winter. As there are no new canes to keep upright through winter minimal supporting paraphernalia is required. All that’s really necessary, assuming the canes are grown in a row, is to keep them from sprawling and flopping as they grow through the summer. Strong string or twine strung from posts should suffice. A further advantage of autumn fruiters, compared to summer types, is that they are not usually taken by birds. Except after heavy bouts of rain the berries also seem less susceptible to moulds.
There’s a lot to be said for autumn fruiting raspberries. It’s a bonus to have raspberries fresh from the plot well into autumn. They even outlast the blackberries which, as was drummed into me by the Sussex folklore of my grandparents, must never be picked after Michaelmas (that’s September 29th). This is because on this date the devil, referred to as ‘Old Nick’ by my grandparents, spits on them (for several years as a very young child I wondered which of our allotment neighbours was ‘Old Nick’ and why he had such poor manners). Autumn fruiting raspberries seem to largely escape satanic spittle. Some berries, especially if not picked promptly, do develop moulds but unlike blackberries, which are often all mildewed by early October, autumn fruiting raspberries withstand the danker and darkening days. With luck there’s at least another six weeks of raspberries to come, which would make it almost twenty since the first berries were plucked in June.
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Photos: Mr Fluttergrub
