New year, New start. Many gardeners pore over their seed catalogues in January, planning their gardening year. They then have to resist sowing the seed to early, keen to move towards spring. Instead, I am taking rather late cuttings: propagating a wide range of unusual but easily grown fruit.
Japanese wineberry has long thorny red stems, and bears a delicious crop of small sticky raspberry-like fruit throughout the summer. Mine was a seedling found in a friend's garden. Two years late it produced it's first crop, and has done well against a south-facing wall ever since.
If you are not lucky enough to find a seedling, more plants can be made in a similar way to blackberry, by layering (make a very small wound in one of the long branches, then peg this branch down so that the wound is partially buried in the soil. Roots should form from this point, and the branch can be cut to separate the new plant).
We do need to share with the blackbirds as our plant is not netted, but we still get lots of bowls of fruit during the summer.
Jostaberries are a cross between black currants and gooseberries. They look like small red gooseberries, have the flavour of black currants, and grow on tall lanky thornless bushes up to 2m high. The yield is enormous considering the small amount of effort required. Mine is mulched with compost in winter, and pruned at the same time. I don't net it and although the blackbirds get their share, we still have plenty of fruit for ourselves.
More plants can be made very easily by taking cuttings during the autumn and winter. Cut a section of woody stem around 20cm long just below a leaf bud. Stick this stem about 10cm deep into a pot of compost or in a spare piece of border and you should see new white roots appearing in late spring. These new plants can be potted up until next autumn, when they will be ready for planting out.
Black Elder (Sambucus nigra 'Black Lace') is a beautiful garden shrub, easy to grow in light shade in damp soils. During autumn and
spring, cuttings can be taken as described for Jostaberries above, which will root very easily.
As with our native elders, these ornamental varieties will flower abundantly, sweetly scenting the garden in May and June on sunny days. They can be used to make a delicate pink elderflower cordial. The black berries which follow can be used in pies and muffins and jams in the same way as the hedgerow fruit. The flowers are a fantastic source of nectar for bees and other pollinating insects, while the berries provide a feast for birds.
Rhubarb may be traditional rather than unusual, but I have included it here as it is so easy to grow, and produces such a huge crop.
I grew mine from seed 5 years ago (the seed packet was
over 20 years old!), and we have had a huge crop from the first year. Apart from a mulch of compost in the winter it gets no other attention.
The stems can be used for a multitude of recipes, from Rhubarb and fennel cordial (a delicious aniseed-flavoured summer drink) and rhubarb and ginger muffins, to sorbet, jelly, pies and crumbles.
New plants are most commonly made by digging up a large crown while it is dormant, and splitting it carefully with a spade into 2 or more plants.
To finish, I will leave you with 2 more images of fruit which I have grown this year, in an unheated well ventilated greenhouse.
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