Perennial fruits

Perennial Fruits

If I only had one sunny patch in my garden, I would use it to grow some form of perennial fruit. Perennial fruits include strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, blackberries, gooseberries and rhubarb.

These fruits come back year after year and are often quite expensive to buy in the supermarket so while you need to invest in the initial plants, after this they're a good investment.

Perennial fruits are quite low maintenance too. Like the rest of the veg patch, provide them with a good layer of mulch once a year and good prune and then they will be quite low maintenance the rest of the year round.

Preparing Your Beds for Perennial Fruit

Your perennial fruits are going to stay in the same place year after year, so you need to do some prep before planting them in place.

My garden has clay soil, so when I prepped my bed I made sure to dig in a lot of organic matter while also removing as many of the perennial weeds as I could so that they wouldn't compete with my fruit plants.

Planting Raspberry Canes

When you plant your raspberry canes you're unlikely to get fruit in the first year, but by the second year, you should get a good harvest. In the winter, prune back any canes that have produced fruit that year and leave the new growth in place - this will go on to produce fruit the following year.

Raspberries can also be quite vigorous, so I've built a wooden structure for mine to prevent them from falling onto the path and make them easier to harvest too.

How Do I Know When to Harvest My Raspberries?

Look out for the darker fruits when harvesting. Ripe fruits should come away from the bush quite easily, if you have to pull too much then they're not ready for harvest.

Maintenance for Other Perennials

Blackcurrants and gooseberries require a slightly different method of maintenance. With these plants, you want to cut their branches back by a third and remove any dead, diseased or crossing branches.

The Benefits of Growing Perennial Fruits

Perennial fruits are great for gardeners who don't have much time on their hands as they are pretty low-maintenance crops to grow.

If you have a lot of birds in your garden, you might want to consider protecting your raspberries and red currants as birds are very attracted to the colour red and will decimate your crop given the chance.