Mixed berries - a new raspberry variant for the plot

Malling Promise raspberries - ready for harvest in June 

As the new allotment slowly takes shape, I've found myself left with a strip of ground about 3m long, and 1m wide, with a 2m tall metal pole framework sunk into it which has proved impossible to dig out. Having removed nearly a dumpy bag's worth of couch grass, bindweed, parthenocissus root and bramble from the strip, I've found a blackcurrant bush underneath all the undergrowth and the ground just needs plenty of organic matter dug into it to be cultivatable.

It's like a little bonus piece of land, a strip that I hadn't realised I had when we started clearing and levelling and digging two years ago. But what to grow in it? That immovable metal pole and crossbar demands something tall that will need training, which immediately made me think of raspberries. But I have thriving raspberries on the old plot: Glen Ample, and All-Gold and the purple Glencoe. I don't really need any more.

It won't be blackberries either: I have enough trouble getting the blackberry bushes to stay within the confines of their bed as it is. I've just cleared a bramble patch measuring 7m by 6m at the top of this new plot and I know for sure that I will have missed some roots which will spring into vigorous life again in April.

But what about the raspberry/blackberry crosses? What about tayberries, loganberries, boysenberries, or, digging out half-remembered names from catalogues, salmonberries, dewberries, whortleberries, chokeberries, or wineberries?

Several hours of pleasurable Internet research later, I think we have these pinned down ...

Loganberry
Rubus × loganobaccus
An American hybrid between a specific raspberry cultivar and a a blackberry, loganberries are thornless and produce masses of fruit which look like large cone-shaped raspberries. However, tayberries, below, are said to be sweeter.

Tayberry
This is a cross between the European raspberry (Rubus idaeus) and European blackberry (Rubus fruticosus). The plant produces prolific crimson fruits which look like an elongated raspberry and are said to be very sweet.

Boysenberry
More complicated, this one: as well as the European raspberry and blackberry, the boysenberry also includes the American dewberry (Rubus aboriginum) and the Loganberry (Rubus × loganobaccus) in its ancestry. The result is a fruit which looks like an oversized blackberry and tastes like one too. Boysenberries are hardy and vigorous - maybe a bit too overwhelming for my small 3m bed.

Dewberry
Rubus aboriginum
Not a hybrid but a group of Rubus species, these are trailing brambles. The fruit are reputed to be difficult to pick as they will readily squish under the slight pressure when ripe. The stems are pretty thorny too. I'm not really after a ground cover plant, so I think I'll leave dewberries off the list for now. Even though I like the name.

Wineberry, aka Wine raspberry or Japanese wineberry
Rubus phoenicolasius
This is an Asian raspberry variety, Rubus phoenicolasius.

Salmonberry
Rubus spectabilis
Another bramble species, this is Rubus spectabilis.

Whortleberry
Not even a Rubus, but a Vaccinum, or blueberry.

Chokeberry, aka Aronia
This is one in a long line of superfood berries. There's a new one every month, isn't there?

Then there are ollalieberries, which are a specific blackberry hybrid; youngberries, which are three-quarters of a boysenberry, being a cross between the European raspberry, blackberry and dewberry; marionberries, a blackberry cultivar (Rubus L. subgenus Rubus) developed in the US.

Differentiating between blackberry and raspberry variants can be confusing: firstly the Rubus genus will readily hybridise naturally, and secondly, because growers take advantage of this trait to try to cultivate versions with larger, sweeter fruits, fewer thorns, and more prolific yields.

Tayberry leaves unfurling in late February.

After considering all of the above, I've bought, just for starters, three tayberry plants this year, and if they go well, there should be space in that bed for a couple more.They are thornless, a big plus having shredded both my hands on the bramble thicket earlier this year, with the promise of fruit in late July and August, which means they should bridge any gap between the end of the summer fruiting raspberries and the start of the blackberries in August.   

Glen Ample raspberries - another reliable cropper.

Bramble clearance: starting from scratch

After the relief of finding most crops unaffected, it’s time to get going with this winter’s Big Task: clearing the bramble hedge. This has been on my to-do list since October and while there’s no doubt other jobs were more urgent, there is a strong whiff of procrastination about this.

The boundary on one side of my plot is almost entirely taken up with brambles. This is not necessarily a bad thing: the brambles covered around two-thirds of the plot when I took it on seven years ago and I cleared it back to the edge to provide a useful windbreak – it’s on the west wide of the plot. Equally usefully, it gives me large juicy sweet blackberries every year, although the hedge has now grown and spread so much that it now produces far, far more blackberries than we could ever hope to eat, even when I coerce half the neighbourhood to come and help me pick them. 

This year, the hedge began encroaching on the adjacent vegetable beds. I hadn’t realised quite how unwieldy it had become until I realised that the paths between the beds and the hedge were now completely overgrown which means the hedge was now 2m wide. Room for another bed in there, my plot neighbour observed. Room for my nascent orchard, I thought. My son wants a cherry tree, I want a greengage and we’re running out of space.

The middle section of the hedge is cleared - still needs digging out.

Hence the clearance plan. The hedge is 12m long. So I intend to dig out the middle 4m entirely – slightly perverse, but the middle section has always for some reason had the least juicy blackberries and is also more accessible from the paths on the plot – and plant the new fruit trees there. The cherry tree is on Gisela rootstock, so we’re looking at around 3m high at maturity (so says the RHS here); the greengage will be on Pixy, I think. Then, this year, I will cut the top 4m section right down to the base and put in proper strong stakeposts and wires so that this year’s growth can be properly trained. The bottom 4m can be trimmed to keep it away from the parsnip bed but left to fruit again this year before it gets the back-to-base post ‘n’ wires treatment next winter.

This means this year’s crop will be reduced by two-thirds. I doubt we’ll even notice.

Blackberry meringue pie

The allotment is edged on one side by a long unruly thicket of bramble plants. Looked at dispassionately, they take up far too much space and produce far too much fruit even for me, family, friends and the birds to eat. Every summer, as they send out long thorny stems across the plot and snag my clothes and scratch my skin, I say that this year I will clear them properly and get them trained on to wires. Then at the end of July, the first fruits ripen to shiny black, and after a week or so in the sun will develop that warm clove-y sweetness that makes blackberry picking such a joy.

Last weekend we gathered up friends, neighbours, their children and dogs, and took punnets, tupperware and trugs up to the allotment for a morning's blackberry picking. Two hours later, we left, containers full to the brim, purple blotches on our clothes, the children's mouths and teeth stained black. The bushes looked much as they had before we arrived: still groaning with ripe fruit.

Once you get the blackberry bounty home, it needs to be dealt with as soon as possible; the fruit don't keep all that well. If the fruits are in good condition and reliably sweet, I'll happily pile them into a bowl with a dusting of brown sugar and a dollop of creme fraiche.

This weekend's pickings were a bit knobbly and globulous after a spell of wet weather. This blackberry meringue pie is warm and mellow where a lemon meringue pie has that sweet-sharp tang, and the blackberry curd is a gorgeous rich musty pink colour.

Blackberry meringue pie

400g blackberries

225ml water

1 sweet pastry case, eg, from Waitrose

25g cornflour

25g butter

100g unrefined caster sugar

3 egg yolks

3 egg whites

50g sugar

Put the blackberries in a pan with the water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 20 minutes or so, pressing down on the fruit with a potato masher from time to time to ensure all the juice is released. Line a colander or sieve with a muslin square and place over a bowl – tip the blackberry and water pulp into the muslin and strain off the juice. Measure the juice in the bowl and make it back up to 225ml with water.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Sprinkle the cornflour into the blackberry juice and whisk in well. Pour into a pan and set over a low heat. Add the butter and unrefined caster sugar and stir until melted and dissolved, and the mixture has thickened. Beat in the egg yolks and cook over a very gentle heat for 2-3 minutes. Don’t let it boil.

Pour the blackberry mixture into the pastry case.

Now attend to the meringue. Place the egg whites in a bowl and whisk until stiff. Add the sugar and whisk in. Spoon the meringue over the blackberry filling, making sure it’s covered lavishly.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 35 minutes – the meringue should be lightly browned on top.