Since I went a little postal on my blueberry bushes last year I, no big surprise, had no fruit this year. The bushes have wonderful new growth and one did manage to squeeze out a cluster of blooms, but overall, no fruit. My friends that remembered my complaints from last year generously offered to “help” me pick this year if they could have a small portion of the pickings. No need to sign up folks for a ticket to pick, the season has been cancelled due to excessive violence on the field.
I did have strawberries that came on in stages all through the summer since they are the everbearing kind and I also have a row of everbearing raspberries.
I got little slips of these raspberries about four years ago and put the sad starts in the ground. It took about two years for them to take ahold and actually start to look like a bush. The third year I got some fruit in the spring, maybe all of a pint. Then came the surprise that the plants bore fruit again in the fall on the new canes. My husband and I had never had this kind of plant before. The canes in the fall actually bore more fruit and I was so excited to be picking in late September and I gleaned out all of a quart of fruit, but who has fresh raspberries in the fall. What a thrill. The plants were just starting to come into their own and we wondered when we would ever have a “crop” off the row. The following year, year four, the spring canes did a little better, but only enough for the cereal bowl and snacking on the vine. But as the summer progressed the new canes just kept coming and coming the row filled in and the canes shot up into the air. We had to build an arbor to support them and finally had to tie them as the summer crept into fall. That fall was windy and wet and not much happened because the rains and cold weather arrived early.
I wondered if this particular variety in this zone near the mountains was not pushing the limits for it’s time frame to produce fruit again in the fall. Our falls are often cold and wet, but if the dice fall right we also have had some long dry falls.
This year was one of those years. The spring crop on the old canes is not the high point of this plant. It reigns in the fall. The explosion of fruit on mature new canes once the plants have reached maturity is unbelievable. I am still picking raspberries. I have made jam. I have six bags in the freezer. I pick every other day and we are eating berries like crazy. A friend gave me some spray so they would not mildew in the rains that have come. They just keep on ripening. The bumblebees have been the key pollinators, the row is like a war zone of bumblies. The nights are getting colder, but we have not had a hard freeze yet. I never would have believed I would be picking fresh raspberries this late in the year. Friends think it is a joke when I tell them the gift of berries are freshly picked.
This type of raspberry is known to the local farmers, but they choose not to mess with it because it is so hard to harvest in the unpredictable fall and it just makes such a mess out of the fields. My row is planted right next to a sidewalk so the mud factor is zero. The row is right in front of my house which is an odd place to plant, but I figured if I put them in the garden I would have to muck my way up and down the row in the mud.
Late this winter I will cut these huge canes that are way over my head back and forego the spring fruit. I will just cater to the new vines for a possible fall harvest. The lower part of the canes don’t produce fruit just the tops so I don’t expect anything to happen next spring. This is the longest learning curve I have ever had, but it has been rewarding.
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