Raspberries are one of our best Scottish fruits, native to much of northern Europe as well as this country. They grow in woodland edges and clearings, as well as along country lanes. For as long as I can remember, I’ve grazed on tiny, deliciously sweet wild rasps, braving nettles and bramble thorns in pursuit of my prize.
As a ten year old, I didn’t realise I was following in the footsteps of my ancestors, who had foraged like this probably for millenia.
Yet, even the famous 18th Century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus had to invent a classical heritage for the fruit. In naming the raspberry, Rubus idaeus after Mount Ida in Crete, the Swede gave his home-grown fruit a ‘respectable’ background. Pliny had claimed this and Homer mentioned Mount Ida, so what more could you want?
Here in Scotland, raspberries had moved from hedgerow to garden by the early 17th Century, but it wasn’t till the 18th and 19th Centuries that breeders started taking the plant seriously.
Apart from fermenting rasps, there had been no way of storing the fruit before the arrival in Europe of cane sugar. So we have the despicable Caribbean slave trade to thank for the development of modern raspberries and endless jars of jam.
Depending on where you live, summer rasps will be over or the season will be drawing to a close, so the dreel, or row, will need sorting out to be sure of next year’s pleasures.
Cut down the old fruiting canes to about 5cm and remove. They make a good brown addition to the compost heap, ideally after shredding, because uncut they take a long time to rot down.
Raspberries should have been spaced 45cm apart and for best results you’ll want a final thinning of 6 canes per plant. With winter storms ahead, preserve all the good strong canes just now, cutting and removing all the poor, spindly efforts. And rasps are keen colonisers, throwing up shoots miles from their designated space, so they too will be for the chop.
Roughly tie selected canes to wires, either individually or in small groups for overwinter protection. If you had a mulch, remove it, especially if you’ve had an infestation of raspberry beetle. After ruining the fruit the larvae drop to the ground and overwinter.
Adults emerge in spring, build up resources by feeding on hawthorn or apple petals and pollen, returning to the raspberries to lay eggs in the developing blossom. Clearing the mulch removes some overwintering cocoons. And bare soil gives birds scavenging opportunities.
With modern bush varieties, like ‘Ruby Beauty’, thin canes allow good air circulation and easy access for picking. Established canes do throw out fresh shoots, so you may want to save some for a second year. It all depends on the size of pot you use.
You’ll always get a poorish raspberry in a 10 litre pot, a better one by scaling up to 45 litres. I find the open ground is by far the best.
With summer rasps now over, the show rolls on with autumn varieties set to offer yet more delights.
I do find modern autumn cultivars much tastier than early varieties, so they’re well worth having if you’ve space.
They grow every bit as tall as their summer cousins, so need similar supporting wires. They do need quite different treatment. Only cut back canes next February: the next flush will start in spring and finish growing by July, hence later fruiting.
You could get 2 crops from the same raspberry dreel by only removing half the canes in February. The uncut plants harvest at the normal summer time, with the others fruiting in autumn.
Plant of the week
Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Black Cat’ bears “pincushion” shaped flowers that open very dark maroon, almost black and then produce pale stamens; the flowers are pleasantly scented and very popular with butterflies and bees. The plants are short lived perennials and do best in well drained soil in the sun.
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