I used to think raspberries were so easy to grow. The plants are very hardy, vigorous, and generally produce lots of fresh berries that would be expensive in the supermarkets. You really need a support structure, and there’s some tying in and pruning to be done, but that isn’t too much of a chore. This is a photo of our row of autumn-flowering raspberries, taken last week…

Looks okay, doesn’t it? But appearances can be deceptive, and recent experiences have left me thinking raspberries are not the easy crop I thought they were.
Last year my attempts at ‘double-cropping’ – leaving some of the canes to over-winter and produce an early crop – produced strange results. The over-wintered canes had masses of flowers, which attracted large numbers of pollinators, but while small fruits formed, they never grew or ripened. Except for just one of the plants, which gave us a small crop of yellow berries.

This time I thinned the canes out more and made sure they were properly tied in. And we’ve had a good crop of berries. Which is great. Except for two problems. The first is bizarre. The plant that cropped last year has once agian given us yellow berries. All of the other plants have produced… red berries!

Now, they’ve been in for a few years, and I’m trying to remember whether they’ve fruited before. If not, then the pot of canes that were supposedly the yellow variety may, in fact, have been mostly red – in other words, I was sold a pup! But if they have produced yellow berries before..? Well, then I really don’t know what’s going on.
Now to the second problem. I’ve grown raspberries in previous gardens without too many being taken by ‘wildlife’ (apart from one year when a pesky varmint squirrel took a fancy to them). This year, in this garden, it seems everyone wants a piece of them.
The initial problem was blackbirds. I know they love strawberries (you may be familiar with the popular William Morris ‘Strawberry Thief’ pattern). But they’ve been quite brazen in raiding our raspberries. There’s now a family of blackbirds – mother, father, and fledgling – at it. In their anxiety to get to the berries they try to settle on branches that won’t hold their weight, which means many of the side shoots are broken and the fruits are dying. And they generally only manage to take a peck out of each fruit before moving on to the next one.
And as if the blackbird problem wasn’t bad enough, now our raspberries have been discovered by wasps. They too ruin the fruits, and their presence makes picking those berries that are intact rather hazardous. We’ve had to employ our secret weapon, which is beginning to have a beneficial effect.

It seems that raspberries, like so many other crops, need protection. A fruit cage would be the ideal solution, but though it would be great for keeping birds away, it would need a very fine mesh to keep the wasps out. Which would, of course, keep pollinating insects out too, which would mean, no fruit!
Netting the row might be possible, but when the row is ten feet long, seven feet tall, and four feet wide, it would be a bit of a task! Certainly it would be worth getting something set up before the fruits start to ripen. Oh well; maybe next year! Although if the double-cropping works, I may get berries in autumn too. I’ll cut out the fruited canes once they’ve done their job, tie in the new ones that are growing up, and see what happens.
Gardening is supposed to be fun! At least we’ve started to see more butterflies in the garden now (so far, it’s been a lean year). Today we had a couple of tortoiseshells, a red admiral, and this comma butterfly; all enjoying this little buddleia bush…
