Staking raspberries

Is there anything worse than hearing someone moan about a surfeit of fruit?

Too many raspberries. I can’t possibly eat them all.  Oh, please.

It’s true. I have them stashed everywhere. In the fridge, in the freezer, in cakes. I love it.

What I didn’t love was the lacerations I was getting every time I walked along the potager path that is next to the raspberry bed.

I put the canes here two years ago as I couldn’t keep up with the watering of the huge patch I had planted up at the top vegetable bed.  The plants were either full  of fruit and fun to pick. Or shrivelling and not setting for want of water.

And it made me feel so guilty to be so neglectful.  So two years ago I started again with new canes I bought from Frédéric Cochet when I last invested in fruit trees.

The first year, nary a fruit. I thought I had been sold a bunch of sticks. But this year. Oh my.

My whimsical design idea of mimicking the woodland forest – underplanting strawberries in the long narrow bed is a bust.  I can’t reach in under the prickly raspberries to reach the fruit.

But there are so many delicious raspberries that I don’t mind losing a few strawberries. If I have time I’ll pot up the strawberry runners and move them somewhere else.

Pause while I add that to my Garden To Do list.

And now with the canes bending down from too much fruit (oh you show off) I have been forced to finally put up some sort of staking.

What I need to do is build a proper chestnut grid like I had a few years ago. A winter project methinks. Right now I’ve just hammered in tomato stakes and run string around each one and lashed a few of the fattest and most prolific canes.  Picking is a lot less painful now.

And breakfast a lot more fun.