Step-by-step guides to growing berries of all kinds in UK gardens — from soil preparation to harvesting.
These are my step-by-step guides to growing berries in a UK garden, covering soil, planting and the seasonal jobs that actually move the needle. If you only read one, start with the berries-in-season calendar to see what to plant or prune each month.
Gooseberry pruning has a reputation for being fiddly, and I think that's mostly because people try to memorise a list of rules instead of picturing the one...
Growing guide →Blackcurrant pruning trips people up for a different reason than most cane fruit: there's no fence full of canes to sort into two neat groups, just a bush that...
Growing guide →Unlike a lot of the hybrid berries I write about, blackcurrants are genuinely easy to buy — you'll find them at most garden centres as well as every specialist...
Growing guide →Every now and then I stumble across a fruit so obscure that I have to read about it twice just to convince myself it's real. Che is one of those. I don't grow...
Growing guide →There's a particular kind of fruit you'll almost never find in a shop, and the mulberry is top of that list. It's not because they're hard to grow or fussy...
Growing guide →Some plants earn their keep with one good trick, but every now and then you meet one that seems determined to do everything at once. Schisandra is exactly that...
Growing guide →Here's a little secret that delights me every time I think about it: one of the most widely planted shrubs in Britain produces an edible berry, and almost...
Growing guide →Every now and then I stumble across a fruit that makes me wonder why on earth it isn't growing in every other garden on the street. The cornelian cherry is...
Growing guide →Every so often I come across a plant that makes me wonder why on earth it isn't in every British garden, and the goumi is one of them. Picture a tough,...
Growing guide →Every now and then I stumble across a fruit that makes me wonder why on earth it isn't in every British garden, and the saskatoon is right at the top of that...
Growing guide →The tayberry has a fair claim to being the best-flavoured cane fruit you can grow in Britain — and you will almost never find one in a supermarket, because the...
Growing guide →Ask what a boysenberry actually is and most people — including plenty who grow them — can't tell you. The hybrid berries are a tangled family of crosses and...
Growing guide →Strawberries, by a wide margin — they fruit in their first year, tolerate most soils, and forgive beginner mistakes better than currants or blueberries.
No — only blueberries and a few other acid-loving relatives need genuinely acidic soil. Most cane fruit and currants are happy in ordinary neutral garden soil.
Late autumn to early winter, while the ground is still workable and the plant is dormant, gives roots a full season to establish before next summer's growth.
