Saved by the man with the pony tail?

Sometimes, when Eric Robson’s ‘jokes’ aren’t rendering me temporarily deaf in self-preservation, elements of Radio 4’s Gardener’s Question Time creep into my subconscious where they linger and fail to drop into the slop tray of forgettances. One such tip, given I think by Pippa Greenwood, but possibly he of the extremely creepy ponytail Bob Flowerdew, was about how to get two crops out of autumn-fruiting raspberries. My ears pricked up at this since, with a little city garden, I can only fit in one raspberry bush, Autumn Bliss.

The traditional advice for pruning autumn-fruiting raspberries is to cut the canes to an inch of the soil in February, so new canes can grow up and fruit by September, giving you one crop. But, aha, if you cut only half your canes back in February, you’ll not only get early raspberries around now, but your September crop too! I can now report the momentous news that it works.

It may be sad to get excited about this, but it’s 9.46am, I’m pregnant and therefore go fuzzy and weird without food, there’s no bread in, and the milkman hasn’t come yet (yes, I live in London but apparently London via Trumptonshire) so no cereal. Popping out this morning and eating four (count ’em) raspberries may therefore have stopped me coming over all peculiar. Try out this newfangled pruning tip and you may be similarly saved. You read it here first (via Gardener’s Question Time – or was it Gardener’s World or Cash in the Attic – please someone give me some food).