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.

2014: The year of the rainbow diet

I think we’re going to be eating a rainbow in 2014. Orange raspberries, scarlet carrots, purple asparagus …

The multi-coloured carrots have been requested by my son who enjoyed enormously our forays into purple carrots a couple of years back. Nowadays we think of carrots as being uniformly orange, but until the 1500s people would have eaten white, yellow or purple carrots. Orange carrots were bred and popularised in Holland to reflect the Dutch national colour, and spread across Europe.

This year I’ve sourced some purple carrots and also a bright red variety, Atomic Red, from Seedaholic in Ireland, as well as some yellow and white ones from Seeds Of Italy. We’ll try to outwit the carrot fly with some companion planting, with fleece and with growing them up high where the carrot fly can’t reach them. In theory, anyway.

I’m planting out a new asparagus bed this year and I’ve heard that the purple varieties are sweeter than green, so have ordered 10 Crimson Pacific crowns from Victoriana Nurseries. I’m not giving up on the green version though, still growing my favourite Connover’s Colossal as well.

I’m buying one year crowns which I’ll plant out in the new bed this spring although they shouldn’t be harvested either this year or next (I bet I won’t be able to resist trying a spear or two next year). So I’ll keep the old bed going as well and won’t dig that over until 2016!

I’m refreshing the raspberry canes as well after ten years. We’ve now got creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans, I think) in the bed which is proving mighty difficult to remove without damaging the existing canes so I have decided to get rid of the dastardly weed as a first priority and replace any canes which have to be sacrificed to the cause. 

I've been looking at multicoloured options here as well: All-Gold raspberries are available from several supplier, as well as the purple Glen Coe, although these are eye-wateringly expensive compared to the red and yellow varieties. 

Waking up in the sun

After what seems like weeks of wind and cold and rain, it only takes a couple of sunny days and suddenly it looks as though we might get some produce this year.

These are tree onions, or Egyptian walking onions, which is a much more exotic name by far.
These edible bulblets are produced at the top of the stems.

Walla Walla sweet onions, grown from seed, beginning to swell at last.

These Quattro Stagione lettuces have been looking like limp flattened seedlings, but are now finally beginning to heart up.

Little Gems are also putting on new growth fast.

Last week they were immature white buds; this week, we have raspberries!

Hosts of strawberries hang down over the side of the raised bed.

Purple-podded mange tout peas need another couple of weeks before they're ready to eat, I think.

Rubies in the green

The raspberries are fantastic this year: Chanel red, glossy and juicy, and I’ll swear they are twice the size they were  last year. I’m relieved because in the mini-drought during April, I didn’t water them concentrating instead on spot-watering the seedlings and plants I know to be thirsty like the early lettuces. So I did wonder if I might get some rather wizened little fruits (and maybe I would have done if it hadn’t started raining in earnest this month).

So we are having a bumper harvest and may even get to store some in the freezer. Usually they get eaten en passant – I leave a bowl of raspberries out in the kitchen and they’ll be gone within a couple of hours.

However, confined to the house by a particularly squally rain shower and thinking that the current batch of raspberries might need eating up really quite soon, I thought a spot of baking might be appropriate. These are raspberry muffins, adapted from Nigella’s Blueberry Muffin recipe (How To Be A Domestic Goddess), which can also be found here, by substituting 200g raspberries for the blueberries and adding half a teaspoonful of vanilla extract.

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of salt

75g caster sugar

75g butter, melted

1 egg

200ml buttermilk (Nigella also says you can mix half and half yogurt and semi-skimmed milk instead)

200g raspberries

½ tsp vanilla extract

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees. 

Mix together the dry ingredients. Beat together butter, egg and buttermilk in a separate bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix lightly with a wooden spoon – a few lumps don’t matter. Fold in the raspberries and vanilla extract.

Scoop (N’s suggestion of an ice-cream scoop turns out to be just the thing) into muffin cases and bake in a suitable tin for 20 minutes.