Fruit Cage

Herewith as promised, a glimpse inside our fruit cage. Some of the fruit bushes, now they are growing up, are a little too close together. We will sort that out in autumn when we can reach things to trim and tie in, without their leaves getting in the way.

Our cobbled together strawberry table worked really well. Although it only had 3 troughs on it this year, next year, it will have 4 and babies (hiding in the little red pots),are already being taken to fill it. I think we got about 4 cereal bowls of strawberries, so not too bad at all, especially as I am the one who likes them and DB can take or leave them!

The blackcurrant bush is growing really well and we may have to adapt the side of the cage, nearest to it, to prevent the leaves growing through. This is just one truss of a reasonable amount of fruit on it - it is only 18 months old.

Both blueberries survived the wet weather of last year and despite not having so much fruit (I pruned them in error last year), they are at last beginning to ripen - blueberries on our morning porridge - yum!

The 2 gooseberries drowned last year and we didn't think they would survive that plus the extra long, hard winter. They did, but got attacked quite early on with gooseberry sawfly. Followed by the hot dry spell, they didn't produce much fruit on each of their 4 trained stems (2 1/2lbs) but we have just picked them all to eat as they are small, soft, tasty and juicy!

Our new thorn-less bramble (a new one last year died almost immediately) is growing well (and needs tying in but will have to wait) has sent out some flowers and baby fruit are forming.

Although I haven't got a photograph yet to show you, the autumn flowering raspberries are up to their full height (rather than the 12 inches they were last year). They are still a little light in colour but far happier than last year. Hopefully they will produce some nice fruit later on.

This morning, whilst wandering around looking at everything, I noticed a new loganberry growing (outside the cage). When I dug it up last year to move it into the cage (where it promptly died!), some root must have been left behind.