By Hannah Stephenson.
Get a taste of sunshine by growing delicious, juicy red fruits in your garden, ready for those delicious summer puddings.
Raspberries, blueberries and other fruits such as redcurrants will combine beautifully and are easy to grow.
Raspberries, for instance, are among the most versatile fruits and the great thing about them is that you don’t need a really sunny place. They will crop in a bit of dappled shade because they are basically a woodland plant. You don’t need a lot of space either as you can grow them in a row, up wires, or make a little hedge at the back of your vegetable garden or herbaceous border.
Other fruits which are easy to grow and make great additions to summer puddings include blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants and strawberries.
Strawberries will spread hugely so are easy to propagate by taking the runners and dipping them into little pots of compost. When you’ve done that, take them away to make a fresh strawberry bed. Put them round your flowers if you don’t have enough room elsewhere and they’ll make good ground cover. You’ll get a lot of fruit that way, but keep suckers to a minimum once you’ve grown on what you want.
If you are a beginner to gardening and can only grow one ingredient for your dessert, grow a blackcurrant bush. It’s completely straightforward, will fruit prolifically and will just get better and better. The maintenance is simple. Every few years you just take out a third of the oldest wood and that’s it. You can even grow a bush in a big half barrel container, provided you don’t use proprietary multi-purpose compost. You’d need a loam-based compost because the plant will be there a long time and you need really rich soil.
Like gooseberries and redcurrants, blackcurrants tolerate a wide range of soil conditions but prefer well-drained, moisture-retentive soil. They prefer full sun but will tolerate light shade. Avoid frost pockets, as frost can drastically reduce yields. One bush should yield about 4.5kg (10lb) of fruit, In small gardens they can be grown in containers.
Bare-root blackcurrants should be planted in late autumn, while containerised plants can go in at any time of year, as long as the soil is not too wet.
If you decide to go for blueberries, they require a moist, acid soil, can be grown in pots of loam-based ericaceous compost and can also provide an ornamental feature thanks to their warm autumn colours.
Start now and with little effort and expenditure you can look forward to those delicious summer puddings. Just a little row of raspberries or a few strawberries are cheap enough to grow but will repay you 100 times over in taste.