Supporting autumn fruiting raspberries

Autumn fruiting raspberries are great. You just chop them down in ground level in February and they grow again, giving you lots of lovely fruit year after year (in my case in late July and August) with very little further effort. You don't even need to support them. But, if like me, you are growing them right next to a path and/or the doors to the greenhouse and/or shed, you might want to, as otherwise they do tend to scratch at you as you walk past.

In previous years, we have used bamboo canes with string tied around them to try and keep the raspberries in. But the raspberry canes have proven stronger than the canes. So what we've now done is buy wooden stakes. The wooden stakes were approximately 180 cm long with pointed tips, so we could bash them more easily into the ground.

We used a mallet to drive them about 30 cm into the ground and then tied string around them at three heights to keep the raspberries in. We actually did it while the raspberries were almost ready to fruit, but doing it before they grow is probably more sensible.

Here's a picture from last year:

You'll notice that since last year, we've also added some paving slabs to make a path. These are not concreted in. We just removed patches of lawn to make them level with the grass. This is fine for us, as their weight keeps them in place, but if you have anyone or anything come into your garden that might injure themselves on unsecured slabs, you're probably better off concreting them in.

Here's a picture of the garden as it is today. You'll notice that I've already got my first bamboo canes in one of the beds. They're for mangetout. And behind them I have broad beans growing. My beds are a bit messier this year, as I'm growing flowers in them before I put some of the veg in, and not all the mixed seeds I scattered have grown, leaving a rather patchy impression in the beds. However, the bees will appreciate any flowers I grow at all, and the sparrows also appreciate them. I've seen them devouring large chunks of leaf from some of the plants.