This week we had lots of sun and unusually warm weather so I used it to do as much garden work as I could. The manure has been spread and mixed with soil, I’ve pruned my roses and now came the time to prune the raspberries. Due to the almost extremely warm weather, they have started growing leaves much sooner than usual so I pruned them almost a month earlier. To learn basics on how to prune click here.

These past few years we had some weird weather so now my raspberries started acting strange. I have a very early variety which gives fruits at the beginning of June, then they have a short waiting period and they start to ripe again around August. The past couple of years they have started to ripe 3 times a year. The young canes that grow during the spring and summer have fruits in the first year around November. They survive the winter and continue with June/August harvest. This hasn’t happened before. I was scared the first year when this happened that next year I will have no berries but they continued giving fruits the next year like the first year harvest never happened. So now I can say that with very short periods I have almost all year berries. 

The weirdest thing is that this are 15-20 years old berries. We haven’t bought any new in ages. They divide themselves and now I have berries that don’t even grow on the metal berry net anymore, but they spread all along the garden fence. I tie them to the fence, but soon when we make more room in the garden and push back the fence I will have to make another berry metal net for those berries. Also although they are really old they give more and more fruits every year.

The same issue is with red currants. They are also 20 years old but also give more and more fruits and bushes are bigger every year. 

The only berries that aren’t as fruitful as before are blackberries. We have two metal nets for them and one is still full of berries with lots of fruits, while the other is much less productive, with smaller fruits and less foliage. I’m considering buying new bushes but I’m not sure still because I don’t know how to make a net of them and growing them as a bush will just take too much space. 
I will, however, buy more gooseberries, cranberries, and maybe American blueberry(the European one refuses to grow on this type of soil) and fill the orchard part of the garden. I’m planning to do this in the next couple of years, maybe even next year.
Berries are sure the best way to have some fruits quickly in a place where you don’t have enough room for big trees.