Diary of a Rocket Gardener: Why I’ll be growing autumn raspberries…

Lately, the weather has been a little uninspiring and spending time out in the veg patch to plant up a fruit garden as I’d intended this month hasn’t exactly appealed. So I’ve been spending time pondering plants instead. My plan is to start off with raspberries, blueberries, tayberries and honeyberries (I already have a raised bed dedicated to strawberries). With a little extra research, I’ve decided to really major on the raspberries, specifically autumn fruiting raspberries. They seem to be the easiest berries to grow with minimal effort required and I thought I’d share my reasons for choosing them:

  1. Birds do not tend to eat autumn fruiting raspberries, so this means I won’t even need to build a fruit cage. Winner.
  2. Shorter varieties like ‘Autumn Bliss’ raspberry canes do not need support. This is great news for me as I have enough stuff to build in the veg plot this year so this is one less job.
  3. Pruning autumn raspberries is a doddle. At the end of the season or over winter you simply cut back all the canes. That’s it.
  4. Autumn raspberries are more or less disease free.
  5. They’re usually ready to pick during August and September which in my book counts as summer anyway.