Raspberry Harvest Beginning

The summer raspberry harvest begins this week at my home.  I collected a small cup full and presented to my family at breakfast this morning. :)  As a gardener, there is great joy in presenting fresh garden treats to your family that you know they love.  My yard is filled with eatables of all varieties for just that reason!  :D 

We have both summer bearing and ever bearing raspberries in our briar patch.  This summer bearing raspberry harvest will be consumed in its entirety by my kids right from the plants if history can foretell the future.  It is from my ever bearing that I get my most abundant harvest.  I manage my ever bearing raspberries so that they produce a more abundant fall harvest instead of two harvests. Check out my posts on establishing your own raspberry patch and  maintaining your summer and ever bearing raspberries for more details on site selection and why I manage my raspberries this way.

Harvest red raspberries when they are deep red and start pulling away from the plant where they attach to the flower.  Yellow raspberries become almost translucent when they are fully ripe.  Either way, the fruit should pull readily away from the plant when it is pickable.

I did notice one plant on which the fruit looks small and limp, and the leaves are dying.  Obviously something is wrong with it.  Rather than take the chance that it has some sort of disease, I will cut the plant off at the ground and drop the whole thing in the trash can this afternoon after we our summer sports practices are done.  It is never worth taking a chance of letting one plant infect the whole lot.

I hope you are enjoying some summer fruit from your backyard this summer!

Happy gardening! :)