23 July 2019

Lovely berries

It's been a good year for my berry bushes.  We've finished the red raspberries, blueberries and redcurrants, and are nearly done with blackcurrants.  The gooseberries are just ripening now, and the yellow raspberries and grapes(!) are forming. 

We actually had a small handful of yellow rasps already--they are a primocane variety which are supposed to bear in autumn, but there was one uncut cane from last year which fruited at the same time as the red rasps.  I might treat it as a floricane in the future, as it never seems to have enough time to ripen in autumn.

Most of the berries have been frozen (the son has been promised jam), though many raspberries and all blueberries were eaten fresh:  yum.

As an aside, it was an exceptional year for berberis berries too.  We don't really eat these;  they taste nice but are very seedy so we leave them for the birds.  This summer, after a few years of careful pruning, there were many branches low enough for our chickens to self harvest too.  At one point it was extremely overgrown, and my plan is to have a spreading but low growing shrub which the chickens can eat directly from.  Nearly there!

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