BLACKBERRY BONANZA
Now’s the perfect time to plant these succulent fruits for a harvest next year
WHAT a glorious year we’ve had for blackberries. Hedgerows were laden with fruit for weeks and there are still some left. But country folk say the devil spits — or does something worse — on November blackberries, though this is a good time for planting.
Wild blackberries are gourmet fruit. They freeze beautifully and, with apples in a crumble, make the world’s finest dessert.
Cultivated blackberries are as different from wild ones as chickens are from swans. They ripen earlier and are larger, more juicy, softer and more acidic. So even if you gather wild blackberries, cultivated ones are still worth growing. And along with other briar fruits, they have tremendous culinary value.
Blackberries, I’m told, are superfoods. So rather than eating obscure grains or kale so bitter you can hardly swallow it — try growing blackberries.
If you have a fence that needs planting up, these briar fruits are a great choice.
In a kitchen garden or allotment, they can be trained along wires stretched between stout posts. They’ll act as gentle windbreaks as well as bearing nourishing fruits.
This is the perfect time to buy and plant all soft fruit. Berry plants are available by mail order, online or at garden centres. Suppliers include Suttons, suttons.co.uk , Thompson & Morgan, thompsonmorgan.com and Pomona Fruits, pomonafruits.co.uk, but there are many more.
THE BERRY BEST
IN MOST blackberries, the fruit comes on stems which developed over the previous summer. So if you plant yours now, the first crop will ripen in 2018.
But exceptional varieties, such as Rueben, are primocane types. Like autumn raspberries, they fruit on the current year’s stems. Two with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit are Silvan, which is thorny, and the thornless Loch Ness. Both have good flavour and yield well.
Choosing thornless varieties seems a no-brainer. But though spiny, New Zealand-bred Karaka Black has impressively luscious fruits and rich flavour.
You needn’t limit yourself to blackberries. Briar fruits with similar habits include loganberries and delicious, thornless tayberries. Both are hybrids with raspberry in their ancestry. They’re as easy to grow as blackberries, but have a richer flavour and a wonderful dark red colour when cooked. Loganberries make an amazing coulis.
TRAINING SCHEME
THE best growing system is to train the long stems along horizontal wires. Stretch the wires between stout posts, setting the lowest 90cm above the ground. Then, fix three more strands at 30cm intervals. The top wire will be 1.8m high.
With mature plants, tie the current year’s stems loosely along the top wire as they develop. The previous year’s stems will have been trained along the lower three strands — in late autumn — and will fruit there the following summer.
Each November, remove all stems that have borne fruit. Then, unhitch the young growths from the top wire. Cut any sideshoots back to 5cm and tie those yearling stems to the lower wires. Repeat each year.
A mulch along the row helps to boost yield. Apply that any time between now and March. I also like to give all soft fruit a dressing of bonemeal in late winter.
If you prefer a briar that blends beauty with utility — handy in a small garden — grow Japanese wineberry, Rubus phoenicolasius. This has emerald leaves, reddish stems and produces clusters of ruby-hued fruits. Eaten raw with a dollop of clotted cream, they’re beyond delicious.