AS THE MONTHS WARM UP, THE SUMMER BERRIES BLOSSOM AND BECOME BOUNTIFUL, ESPECIALLY RASPBERRIES. TO MAKE THE MOST OF THIS BOUNTY, OUR HOME HAS TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR RASPBERRY PATCH.
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PHOTOGRAPHY & PHOTOS: JACI HICKEN
A little while ago, my other half celebrated half a century, and as a gift, a friend gave him eight raspberry canes.
This was early in our gardening journey, resulting in us building our first raised garden bed specifically for berries.
I had visions of a flourishing berry patch, with feature roses in the corners, a neat row of raspberries, a patch of yellow raspberries down one end and blackberries the other and a row of each colour of currants, red, white and black.
Oh, how wrong that was.
Raspberries can take over.
A four-metre-wide, 12-metre-long garden bed was built, with a path down the middle, which was filled with clean topsoil topped with mushroom compost and mulch.
We planted the raspberry canes by simply sticking them into the soil, which would have been in May.
They all took to their assigned spots.
Once established, raspberries tend to travel by themselves out of their garden beds.
To prevent them from escaping their garden bed, it is lined with hard plastic, which also helps the garden bed retain moisture in the warmer months.
If one pops up in the lawn nearby, we just mow over it or pull them out of the next-door raised garden bed, where the asparagus lives.
Raspberries come in two seasonal varieties: raspberries that fruit on first-year canes late summer into autumn, and raspberries that fruit on second-year canes late in the spring, through to early summer.
All the raspberry canes we were given were second-year fruiting canes.
With second-year fruiting canes, you prune them to the ground once they have fruited, died back, and their leaves have become dry, allowing the new growth from this summer to fruit next summer.
With raspberries that fruit on first-year canes, once they have fruited, you cut them off at ground level to re-grow for next year's fruit.
The raspberry canes were all second-year fruiting canes, requiring pruning to the ground after fruiting to allow new growth for the following year.
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
To contain the raspberries, the garden bed was lined with hard plastic to prevent them from escaping and to retain moisture.
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
Because we only have second-year raspberry canes, around Easter each year, the old canes, which have borne fruit, are cut out.
The raspberry patch is weeded and mulched, then left to blossom and fruit in the spring.
After the canes have blossomed, before the fruit is fully formed and red, a bird net is placed over the patch, which results in up to 40kg of fruit around the second week of November to the first week of December.
The raspberry patch yields up to 40kg of fruit annually.
Photo by
Jaci Hicken
The raspberries are frozen, made into jam, vinegars, cordials and turned into my or a chocolate raspberry cake.
