We love raspberries!

Posted:5 January 2014

One of the questions we are often asked is what are the best raspberries to grow – fruit growing is such a rewarding part of the garden year and raspberries are brilliant for jam making, puddings or just eating straight from the canes!

Between now and the end of March is a good time to buy bare root canes but also in the spring plants can be bought in large pots.

Here are some of the best ones that have been trialled by the RHS   ten varieties all given an Award of Garden Merit (AGM) – five for summer and five for autumn cropping.

The star of the whole trial, and a new award-winner, was Tulameen even early in the trials the judges said: “Tulameen has performed very well and appears to be much better than the rest. A good variety, with good flavour, pickability and weight of fruit.”

The other new award went to ‘Glen Magna’ while ‘Glen Ample’, Malling Admiral and Malling Jewel were still up to AGM quality and had their earlier awards re-confirmed.

‘Glen Ample’ produced 2kg of fruit per cane in its first year, with Tulameen close behind.

Amongst the autumn-fruiting varieties ‘Autumn Bliss’ retained the AGM it’s had since 1993 and four new awards were made to All Gold, Caroline, Joan J and Polka.

With varieties from the summer group and from the autumn group, you can now look forward to a long season of AGM raspberries (just to note, Glen Moy and Glen Prosen, have not kept their AGM as other varieties are much better).

Pruning tip:  It is worth remembering that summer-fruiting raspberries fruit on wood made in the previous year, therefore the old fruited canes should be pruned out straight after fruiting; whereas the autumn varieties fruit on wood made in the current season and therefore the whole plant should be cut down to the grown in late winter.

Photo: allthatimeating.com