That's the weight of a small child!

Everyone who visited the allotment this weekend was focused on one task alone - picking the soft fruit. I stood with full punnets in hands as one man scurried past, "Have to pick the fruit," he muttered, "crying shame if I don't," and that was the last I saw of him for the rest of the afternoon, as after that he remained hidden behind undergrowth somewhere on his plot as he endlessly picked.

During the course of the weekend I picked blackcurrants, gooseberries, redcurrants, tayberries and raspberries. The jostaberries will have to wait for another day and there will be more raspberries by Wednesday. It is an amazing thing to grow food quicker than you can eat it and I am determined to use and preserve as much of it as I can but that does mean a lot of hard work. The clue is in the name really - kitchen gardening - once you come in from the garden there is still a heck of a lot to do in the kitchen. Mainly it involves picking over the fruit and decanting it into bags for the short term before being more creative with it later. And all this on top of the vegetables - broad beans, peas, courgettes etc. that need preparing before they can be made into something tasty for dinner.

Last year I didn't own a chest freezer and this year I marvel at that and wonder what I did with it all before preserving it. By the end of the weekend I could barely get the lid closed on my chest freezer and I had already resorted to putting bags of fruit in the kitchen freezer. Fortunately, a friend of mine had been given a large chest freezer by a relative who was downsizing and she said I could use some of the space in it if I wanted it. I almost bite her hand off at the offer and this morning I took all the bags of fruit out of my chest freezer in order to move it into hers. This allows me to continue making lollies, ice-cream, frozen veg etc. as well as continue to throw bags of fruit in as I pick more. It was particularly useful because it gave me the opportunity to gather all the bags of the same fruit together and weigh them so I knew exactly how much I had of each fruit.

Now, bear in mind that I have already made strawberry and raspberry jam as well as several batches of ice-cream, lollies, jelly and cordials. I move out 4lb 13 oz of gooseberries, 6lb 14 oz raspberries, 4lb 14 oz tayberries, 2lb 5 oz cherries, 5lb 15 oz redcurrants and 12lb 4 oz blackcurrants. Added up that works out as 37 pounds of fruit or, to put it another way, 2 stone, 9lb of fruit. That's the weight of a small child!

I gave my friend a pound of fresh raspberries as a first installment for freezer space rent (not that she asked for anything) but I'm very grateful for the breathing space it has provided.

This afternoon I used 4lbs of fresh blackcurrants to make jam but the plant still has fruit on it!

Taming the soft fruit

I have spent a couple of days trying to get to grips with pruning my fruit canes and trees. Pruning has always been something of a dark art as far as I'm concerned. It's not that I haven't tried to get to grips with the matter. Whenever I think about pruning it always seems to be the wrong time. I refer to a book to remind myself of the details but discover that it's really the wrong time of year to be tackling it, but by the time it comes round to the correct time of year I have forgotten what it is I'm supposed to be doing. But eventually you have to take things in hand no matter what time of year it is.

So having missed the ideal late autumn and winter windows for pruning the soft fruit, I decided that I needed to tidy my blackberries, tayberries and raspberries anyway. According to the books, summer raspberries flower and fruit on growth in its second year. This means that ideally canes that have fruited should be cut back to ground level in the autumn and any new growth should be tied into supports to overwinter. Autumn fruiting raspberries, in contrast, flower and fruit within the same season so the canes should be cut completely back to ground level in late winter.

This is fairly straight forward on the face of it and would be fantastically useful if 1) I could retain that information in my head and have it spring to the front of my brain at the correct time of year, and 2) I could tell which were summer and which were autumn fruiting raspberries.

I know what you're thinking... Hazel, you numpty, summer fruiting raspberries have fruit in the summer and autumn fruiting raspberries have fruit in the autumn, it's obvious. Well, it's not. I have tried for two years now to get to grips with this. If my raspberries have fruit on them in June and July I hang a label around them clearly stating "summer". Sorted, the rest must be autumn. But when I try the same exercise in autumn, I find fruiting canes with a "summer" label hanging from them. Perpetual would be a better word - they just don't stop fruiting. And I know for a fact that all the yellow fruiting raspberries are all "All Gold", an autumn fruiting variety, but they happily bear fruit June to November. I don't know why... maybe it's down to being pruned at the wrong time of year!

Anyway, I have been round them all this last couple of days and it seems to me that at this time of year it all becomes quite obvious what needs pruning. There are some raspberry canes with lovely new growth all the way from root to tip, interspersed with completely dead canes that are brittle and grey/brown. I'm figuring that these are the autumn fruiting ones and that the dead canes are the ones I should have cut back to the ground in later winter and the lush ones are this year's new growth. Easy peasy, I just cut away all the dead canes and they soon look a lot smarter. Then there are the ones that have new growth from root to 2 thirds the way up the stem, plus dead canes in between. I reckon these are the summer raspberries and the dead canes are the ones I should have cut back to ground level in autumn and the other ones are the ones that grew but didn't fruit last year and now need tying to the supports. Sorted... except I haven't got round to giving them any support yet - a job for Steve this spring, me thinks!

So with the raspberries under control, I turn my attention to my tayberries. Every year I train these up over an archway, a thornless one on the right and a thorny one on the left. And every year I have to untie the dead wood from last year and tie in the new growth from this year. Still, it is so much better than allowing them to ramble along the ground, especially in the summer when I have been known to nip round to the allotment in sandals to harvest soft fruit, only to get a thorny tayberry whip tangled around my toes!

The blackberries follow the same rules and definitely should not be allowed to trail along the ground because wherever they come into contact with the ground they will put down roots and spring up new plants, which can become a definite nuisance.

If you were ever in any doubt, you can now be sure that I'm no expert when it comes to pruning but there are some things I'm sure about. Firstly, it is important. If you don't prune you'll still get fruit but eventually the yield will decrease and the whole thing will become a mess. Secondly, you are in charge, not the plants. Soft fruit can be as problematic as any weed if you let them so be ruthless - if a raspberry plant has sprung up somewhere where it is not welcome, chop it down, you already have enough fruit from the other canes. And finally, it's difficult to completely cock it up. If you make a mess of it once it may reduce the yield of fruit for a season but it will recover.

Whilst I was there, I checked to see how it is best to prune trained apple trees. It recommended pruning in the summer to keep the shape of the tree and I briefly wondered whether to ignore this advice as I'm getting chop happy. But on reading further it explained that pruning in winter and spring actually encouraged growth. Definitely not what I'm after so I shall put the secateurs away for a few months now and try to remember to get them out again at the correct time.