Let them eat raspberries – in November

Ripe for the plucking...

One sign of the topsy-turvy season: eating fresh raspberries, straight from the plant, outside, in the second week of November! Admittedly, quite a lot of the fruits were on the watery-looking side and/or sprouting a fuzz of mould, but the ones I picked were tasty, plump and blemish-free. And those that are less appealing to the human eye will be gobbled up by Robins, Blackbirds, mice and voles, among other diners.

Of course these are autumn-fruiting plants, of an unknown variety – kindly given to us by friends several years ago – but one that seems to be particularly late-maturing, needing a really good summer to flower and fruit well. That being the case, we grow them as 'perpetual' croppers, leaving this year's fruited canes to grow summer-flowering side-shoots next near, and only cutting them back when we have picked that second flush of berries. In a good year, that means we can be picking over the course of four months, from two generations of canes growing side-by-side, though there is never the abundance of berries that comes from the classic summer-cropping varieties. In most autumns, the cold sets in before the second crop has fully ripened. Not so this year, but I wonder when we will next be picking raspberries in November!