Good varieties to grow in the UK: Malling Jewel (popular), Autumn Bliss (autumn fruiting) Plant in: October to March Harvest in: June to October, depending on variety Type of soil needed: Light, pH neutral to moderate Favoured climate: Warm, light
Ideally, raspberries are best planted in late autumn, although as late and March and February is suitable. Summer-fruiting varieties will produce canes in the year that you plant them, although no fruit until the following year; autumn-fruiting varieties will give you fruit in the first year.
Raspberries are bought as small canes or plants and should be planted in rows. Choose a sunny spot, and mark out a row which allows 4 metres for every 10 canes. The row will need to be 1m wide.
Take three relatively sturdy posts per 4 metre row, each a couple of centimetres thick and 3 metres long, and plant them into the soil at each end of and along the row, burying them 60cm deep ground for support.
Use screws with eyes to make supports for wires a metre and a half up the exposed posts, then another set about sixty centimeters above the ground, and a third in between the two. Stretch wire through these and fix taut, so that you have three horizontal wire supports.
Dig a 4 inch deep trench along the row, at the base of the posts, and then plant your young canes apart, spacing them evenly no less than 40cm (a tenth of the row) apart.
Keep the original cane pruned to 10 inches, and soon you'll have many new canes; wait until these are almost a metre long, then prune the original one to the ground and tie the new canes to the support wires (use a figure of 8 loop with stout string). Feed well with organic fertilizer from spring onwards.
Harvest the fruit when it's ripe, red or gold (depending on variety) and soft; once a cane has been fully harvested, prune it and tie one of the new canes that will have started growing from the same place. Raspberries don't keep well and are very delicate, so eat or cook them within a day or so of picking them.
