Gardener’s guide to gluts: Blackberries

I have fond recollections of foraging for blackberries with my maternal grandparents. They lived close to the coast and I remember wandering about in wellies, my fingers purple with the juice of the blackberries my sister and I ate as fast as the others could collect. We’d happily brave the thorns for the delicious berries […]

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Counting (on) strawberries and pineberries

I’ve toyed with gardening for years but lately I find myself obsessed with my garden. I wander the patio, chatting with the seedlings and glorying in every extra centimetre that my plants grow. Extra leaves are cause for jubilation and I drag my poor husband into the garden and demand that he admire every emerging […]

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Going up in the world: The amazing climbing strawberry "Mount Everest"

I wonder if I’m being a bit too ambitious with all of the unusual plants that I’m taking on this year? First the hanging raspberry (which has admittedly keeled over as promised but has yet to produce any fruiting fronds), and now this, a climbing strawberry. I’m trying the perennial “Mount Everest” climbing strawberry plant. […]

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Hanging raspberry canes can’t (or at least it appears that way…)

Pretty unimpressive before planting You know the old saying “too good to be true”? Well I think I may have fallen for the marketing hype on some raspberry plants to replace my old Raspberry canes. They claim to be trailing or tumbling canes that you can grow in hanging baskets. This makes me suspicious in the […]

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How to freeze berries: making the most of a home-grown blackcurrant harvest

One of the biggest problems with having such a tiny city garden is that you can’t fit in lots of plants. This isn’t a problem in itself as most plants, especially berry bushes, will crop quite heavily over the growing season. However, if you find yourself (as I do) in the first year of your […]

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Harvesting home-grown food: Tayberries

The Buckingham Tayberry is a lovely and vigorous plant. I erred on the side of caution when it came to planting up my soft fruit raised beds. I wanted to plant fruit that I love to eat, that would save us money and that I know tastes better fresh. So I went for a whole […]

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