END OF SUMMER STRAWBERRIES AND RASPBERRIES

Gardening will never cease to amaze me.  While the Polka raspberries that I grow are really autumn fruiters, they are also double-croppers.  That means that the summer fruit grow on last year's old canes which are cut down when they finish providing fruit, and the autumn crop grows on the current year's new green canes.   I understood that if you allow double-cropping, then the summer harvest will be at the expense of the size of fruit in autumn.  For a few years now I have grow Polka and while the summer crop is reasonable, the autumn crop has been quite disappointing.  That is probably down to the awful cold and wind we keep getting leading up to winter.  This year though I have noticed that Polka is providing giant raspberries on this year's canes.  They taste great too.

Polka raspberries, autumn crop of this year's canes

I noticed that the developing raspberries were very large.   If the bad weather could just hold off until the fruit develops and ripens...

Polka raspberry - macro photo

Now, I have been trying to get a decent crop of strawberries for the last 5 years.  I don't think the occasional perfect strawberry and a load of small misshapen or slug-eaten ones counts.  I used to grow several types of strawberries but got tired of the botrytis and crop failure, so I discarded them all and only kept the perpetual fruiting strawberry plant which seemed healthier and resistant to disease.  I only had one plant, from which I have propagated many.  I have them in a free standing trough and in large pots.  Now, when summer is almost over, the plants are providing a decent amount of healthy strawberries for me to enjoy at breakfast time in my bircher muesli.  So far, the plants have shown no sign of botrytis.

Perpetual fruiting strawberries

 Early next year, before the strawberry plants start to actively grow, I shall replace the compost in the free-standing trough and the pots with fresh compost.  This will not only feed the plants but also help control disease.  I understand that if you grow strawberries in garden soil then after a two or three years you need to grow them elsewhere.  Also, plants should be replaced every few years.  This is easily done by planting the new plants formed at the end of strawberry runners while still attached to the mother plants and then severing the young plant from the runner once roots have been formed.

  

Perpetual fruiting strawberries

Tell you what though, you have to watch out for those slugs and snails.  I was clearing dead leaves from the strawberries yesterday (doing that helps control any chance of disease developing and spreading) and I found three large snails stuck to the inside edge of one of the large pots in which some of the strawberries are growing.  They had been concealed by leaves.  Tricky blighters aren't they?  I should have taken a photograph before they shuffled off this mortal coil.