So berry delicious!

Ruth tidies up soft fruit plants already harvested this year

- Ruth Hayes

LUSCIOUS homegrown berries are one of the highlights of the summer harvest and this year was no exception.

Our strawberries and early raspberries were extremely generous in their fruiting and now that has finished, it’s time to repay that generosity with some seasonal care.

Summer-fruiting raspberry canes that have cropped need to be cut to ground level now, and the best of this year’s unfruited canes tied back for next summer’s crop.

If you have a large row of canes with new and old plants growing together (like ours!), the canes to remove are the ones looking past their best, with tatty, yellowing leaves and drying stems.

You can also start propagating strawberries. Each summer, the plants throw out ‘runners’, long overground roots that develop tufts of new leaves at the end or in the middle, with corresponding roots underneath.