Berry delicious

I was tidying my office the other day in one of my semi-regular attempts to regain control of the mountains of paper that end up on my desk. What I hadn’t accounted for was the number of plant labels that had found a home beside the computer and under a stack of gardening magazines.

I keep all the labels from purchased plants as a reference. If I were to pull out the file they reside in and add them all up, I suppose there would be hundreds, probably thousands of individual labels describing hundreds of different plants species. They’re not always accurate, often carrying an incorrect botanical name or providing dodgy cultural advice, but they’re worth hanging on to nonetheless. You never know when you might need to refer to one.

Anyway, while tidying up the labels it got me thinking about some of my favourite plants. Apples top the list. I am, after all, the grandson of a man raised in Herefordshire, one of the world’s great apple growing regions. Salvias are up there. So are ornamental grasses, pear trees, roses and grevilleas. But one group of plants I’ve developed a recent affection for are berries.

I guess much of the enthusiasm is for the fruit, but I also have a genuine appreciation for the plants and their culture. I’m one of these weird people who has a dedicated berry patch in the garden, and because I enjoy training plants, one of my favourite jobs is to tie the raspberry canes to a wire trellis to keep them in some semblance of order and to make for easier picking.

And let me assure you, there will be plenty of picking. Raspberries in particular produce large yields of fruit for the small amount of space they require. My plants take up about six square metres, yet produce scores of punnets of plump, organically grown, absolutely delectable fruit. The kids graze on them most mornings, relatives and visitors to the garden always want a sample (one family likened the taste to raspberry cordial!), and still there are copious amounts of fruit to be picked. Blackberries are even more productive, but depending on the variety take up more space.

If berries are so productive and easy to grow, why do so few people have a berry patch in the backyard? I think one reason is the perception that cane berries can be invasive. This is true to some extent. Blackberries grow in wild thickets just down the road from my house, and left untended, they’d perform similarly in a garden setting. Raspberries sucker like mad. Some growers plant them in a contained bed, but the suckers are easy to dig up and provide plenty of new plants to give away. And while it’s true that some blackberries have vicious thorns, that’s never stopped rose growers and varieties such as ‘Waldo’ are thorn free.

I think the other reason people don’t grow them much is that they have a reputation for being cold climate plants. Again, this is only half true. Some raspberries and blackberries need cold winters to set fruit, but autumn fruiting raspberries such as the variety ‘Heritage’ tend to be low-chill. Plus, the red soils of Toowoomba, Highfields, Hampton and so on are ideal. Berries prefer rich, slightly acid soil and above all, excellent drainage.

The third reason most people don’t grow them is due to a perception that they’re hard to grow and need special training. Again, half true. Get the soil right (see above but also add lots of organic matter prior to planting), give them an aspect with full or morning sun, and a bit of water when dry, and you’re half way there. Training is a bit trickier, but not much.

Raspberries are classed as either summer or autumn fruiting. Summer varieties produce flowers (and therefore fruit) on second-year wood called floricanes. In the first year, these are called primocanes. Pruning is done in autumn and consists simply of cutting out all floricanes than have finished fruiting, leaving the pale green coloured primocanes to produce next summer’s crop. Blackberries are dealt with in a similar fashion. Autumn fruiting raspberries are even simpler. In winter you just cut all the canes back to ground level. They’ll shoot again in spring, and produce fruit on one year old wood.

Why buy those expensive packets of frozen berries from the supermarket when you can easily grow your own berries at home? In my view berries ought to be considered an essential plant in all but the warmest parts of the Downs. They deserve a bit of space alongside those other ubiquitous plants of the Aussie backyard, the lemon tree and the passionfruit vine.

First published in The Chronicle 30th January 2010. Photo by Justin Russell.

Tagged as: kitchen garden