The weather has been beautiful up here in the South Lakes. It hasn't rained for at least 2 whole weeks (the first extended run of dry weather since 2011) and on a couple of days it has been quite warm - according to my car we hit the heady heights of 12C on one day last week. I have a deadline to meet at the moment so am a little busy, however I have managed to squeeze in a couple of quick trips to the plot.
After watering the seeds I have been sowing over the last couple of weeks, the first job on my list was to prune the, very prickly, autumn raspberries...
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| Before... |
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| After! |
The Royal Horticultural Society recommends cutting Autumn raspberries down to the ground in February, well I just managed it, pruning mine on the 28th. As you can see it looks a lot tidier. As well as cutting them back I also put a layer of compost on the top. I was pleased to see lots of new canes poking out of the ground (below). These plants didn't bear much fruit last year, I am hoping they will be a little more generous this year.
While pruning I was pretty amazed to see a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) butterfly fluttering around the plot.
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| Green Shoots - New Canes Appearing on the Autumn Raspberries |
Well done, and I hope that they do well this year.
ReplyDeleteI presume that the Painted Lady hibernated here over the winter as they're usually a migrant. Flighty xx
A good job well done - I hardly had any raspberries at all last year - first time ever. I missed them as I love to have them on top of cereal for breakfast. Lets hope we do a bit better this year.
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