Help with choosing new soft fruit

[Alicante]

Hi there,
Newbie here from sunny Hampshire! I need your advice on choosing some new soft fruit. I have dug up half of my tayberries and was going to replace them with a thornless blackberry but I am not sure if this is a good idea. There are plenty of brambles in the allotment hedge. Any suggestions for alternative fruit welcomed.
Thank you

[Nicos]

Hi there- and welcome to the Vine!

I'm presuming you don't like tayberries???
Out of interest why did you pull them up?..it might make a huge difference to the answer to your question!!!
So long as the plants you pulled up have no disease, you can plant any fruit there

[planetologist]

Everything! The more diversity the better. Also, I would aim to spread harvet around the year; this calendar might help:
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/green_...s/LCCfruit.pdf
Note that with early and late varieties this can vary.

[Zelenina]

Hi Alicante and Welcome!

I want to plant Tayberries on my new patch, so I'm also curious about why you dug yours up. I won't ask you to send them to me though, because the postage might be a bit high

I already have two thornless blackberries to plant. Other hybrid berries I'm interested in are Loganberries and Boysenberries, but they might taste similar to the Tays.

Raspberries of course. I have some that were here when I arrived, but I want better ones that fruit over a longer season. There are summer and autumn fruiting types, and the less usual yellow and purple ones.

Then there are bush fruits like red, white and blackcurrants, gooseberries, Josta berries (another interspecies hybrid).

And more unusual fruit like goji berry, sea buckthorn, aronia. Blueberries and cranberries but they need acid soil. If you've got room for a smallish tree you could try mulberry. And strawberries of course. Lots of strawberries

[Alicante]

It's true I am not that keen on tayberries, so I dug half of them up to make room for something different! There was nothing wrong with the plants and they have been given to other plot holders, I just had too many and wanted some ideas for alternatives. I dug out four plants but really I think the space will only take two.
So any ideas for sweet and taste fruit would be great.
Thanks

[Zelenina]

Raspberries are probably your best bet for that space, if you like sweetness. You could get one summer and one autumn fruiting plant. I think they are supposed to be sweeter than Tayberries, though I haven't actually tasted a Tay to compare them. I ate loganberries when I was a child and liked them very much, but I like more acidity than many people do.

Currants aren't usually very sweet and are used mainly for cooking with sugar. Dessert gooseberries are very sweet when ripe, but the cooking varieties not so much.

Or your first suggestion of thornless blackberries could be good. They'll probably be bigger than the wild ones, and maybe sweeter too. And you might be able to get a variety that fruits at a different time from the wild ones.

[Scarlet]

Welcome to the vine Alicante, I'm a raspberry fan, Autumn fruiting would be my preference! With this mild weather at the moment I'm still picking them. I would agree that blackberries are plentiful in the hedgerow so probably not your best option, I've got a thornless variety and personally find the wild ones tastier. White currants are very good fresh - do you want to eat them fresh, use them for preserves or freeze for later on in the year?

[Alicante]

Thank you all very much for your advice, you have certainly given me something to think about! I will do some more research into loganberries and into white currants. I already grow autumn fruiting raspberries, gooseberries and strawberries, so an early fruiting loganberry seems like a good idea and white currants sound like a good addition as well.
It is nice to eat fruit fresh and to be have enough to freeze for the winter.
Thanks again

[Alison]

I have a single white currant and it produces stupidly large volumes of fruit which the birds don't seem interested in, guess they don't realise they are ripe. However, I seem to just freeze and forget about them so maybe the birds have a point . Think I have a full drawer of them now! Made some into ice cream and have considered jam but given my time again I'd probably have planted another black currant.

[Guest]

I have a single white currant and it produces stupidly large volumes of fruit which the birds don't seem interested in, guess they don't realise they are ripe. However, I seem to just freeze and forget about them so maybe the birds have a point . Think I have a full drawer of them now! Made some into ice cream and have considered jam but given my time again I'd probably have planted another black currant.

One of my loves for growing berries and currants is being able to make summer pud - to buy the fruit would cost a small fortune

Summer pudding | BBC Good Food

[Alison]

One of my loves for growing berries and currants is being able to make summer pud - to buy the fruit would cost a small fortune

Summer pudding | BBC Good Food

Puddings like that are nice but not something I'd want very often. Used to have pudding as standard when I was a kid but it seems a strange concept now. Probably only cook something about every couple of months and my currant bushes produce at a far higher rate

[Scarlet]

Puddings like that are nice but not something I'd want very often. Used to have pudding as standard when I was a kid but it seems a strange concept now. )

My kids eat a dessert every day. They would consider it strange if they didn't have one. I try to use the fruit stuff as it's better than a bar of chocolate. It's surprising how many of their friends rarely have fruit crumbles or pies, puddings etc.

[Kristen]

My Mother made puddings regularly when I was a kid ... these days we have a pudding for Sunday lunch, 'coz my inlaws cook then. We'd be better off making puddings mid-week instead of raiding the freezer for ice cream, or grabbing a bar of chocolate instead

[Alicante]

My Mother made puddings regularly when I was a kid ... these days we have a pudding for Sunday lunch, 'coz my inlaws cook then. We'd be better off making puddings mid-week instead of raiding the freezer for ice cream, or grabbing a bar of chocolate instead

I make quite a lot of fruit puddings, crumbles and cobblers because they are easy puddings to make for a vegan. My youngest has been a vegan for about three years and it is so much cheaper to make vegan puddings than to buy them. Also gets fruit into teenagers!

[Kristen]

Perhaps I should knock up a pudding during a lunch break (I work from home). I'm not much good in the kitchen though ... growing the stuff is my domain ...