By carefully selecting chosen cultivars an extended cropping season can be achieved. Given simple protection, ripe fruits can be harvested right through autumn until the first frosts.
Reliable cultivars
Help prolong the taste of summer by growing autumn-fruiting raspberries.The most reliable cultivar is heavy-cropping ‘Autumn Bliss’. For something more unusual, try yellow-berried ‘Fallgold’, which also makes a lovely golden jam.
Easy maintenance
Unlike summer-fruiting cultivars, autumn raspberries fruit on the current season’s canes. If planted in a sunny position the fruits ripen in late summer ready for picking in autumn, usually from September through to the first frosts. To maximise this yield it is necessary to cut all fruited canes to the ground in late winter (left). Because the canes are treated identically there is no need to have a permanent support system in which to tie new canes, as is done with summer raspberries. The canes are simply planted in a row and allowed to develop into an informal thicket. The mature canes will need some support, but this can be achieved by placing canes and string around the entire row. Stray canes that pop up outside of the row should be pulled up when young.
Extending the season
With frost protection it is possible to extend the harvest into early winter. Do this by covering canes with horticultural fleece or by growing them in a polytunnel.
Alternatively, for an extra crop in early summer consider only cutting half the fruited canes downs to ground in late winter. Just tip back the remainder. These taller ones will then branch and produce raspberries around June to July. The new canes (primocanes) will still have sufficient space to grow up through and will crop in the autumn.
Helen Bostock