Raspberries are our most popular soft fruit. As with all our fruit, we span the seasons with varieties chosen for their flavour and not their shelf life. Fruits are tree ripened to perfection, then picked and sold fresh each day.

The thrushes and blackbirds swipe the first flush of Glen Moy and All Gold, until the quantity of fruit outstrips the local bird population’s appetite. It was this mix of pink and yellow summer raspberries that won us “Best Organic Raspberries” at the Organic Food Awards.

We then work through, amongst others Glen Ample, the apricot coloured Valentino and finally on to the smaller, deeper red Autumn Bliss – when raspberries taste like they really, really ought to.

Hybrid berries cover a multitude of sins, including giant blackberries which have been developed for machined harvesting in July. Quite the opposite are the delicious Boysenberries, which in so many respects are identical to Mulberries, and just as hard to harvest a saleable crop!

Buckingham Tayberries and Loganberries are our mainstays of these berries, which provide for a more sophisticated palate than the giant summer blackberries.

Our gooseberries span the entire gooseberry spectrum, starting at Whitsun with the culinary variety Invicta, where the little green bullets require indulgent quantities of sugar and cream to be enjoyed.

The first of the dessert varieties are the small and slightly hairy Early Sulphur and Golden Drop, followed by the Finnish Hinnonmakis Red and Yellow. Rokula and Martlett show up deeper red, less hairs and more syrup Basically, as the season progresses, so improves the quality of the gooseberries, culminating the in the Queen of all the gooseberries, the plum sized Leveller, with qualities to match the finest ripe peach.

For the plums as with say the gooseberries, the yield of each variety is directly and inversely proportional to the value of each fruit. For example the Damson Merryweather yields so fantastically well that we can hardly give them away, yet Excalibur produces just a few giant plums of nectarine proportions and qualities.

Needless to say, not even the birds are really interested in the Damsons, yet we (birds, deer, badgers and even scrumpers) are all elbowing each other out of the way to get to the precious few Excalibur.

Other varieties include Victoria, Opal, Czar, Dennison’s Superb, and Greengage.

Blackcurrants are reputed to be the superstars of all the super foods, despite the fact that 95% of the UK crop is grown (and machine harvested) for Ribena.

Our early variety Ben Hope will be ready by the end of June, and if you put your nose to the berries you can already smell the promise of so much goodness!

Throughout July we will also harvest the only truly improved blackcurrant, which has been crossed (in South Africa) with a gooseberry, the Jostaberry.

Subsequent varieties are Ben Tirran and, well into the autumn, the smaller but more intensely flavoured Ben Connan.

Red currants, white currants and pink currants, collectively known as the vine currants, have a dramatic visual impact – cascades of crimson pearls and all that, but they need more thought as to how to deal with them in the kitchen, and this limits their demand enormously.

In fact the pink currants (varieties Pink Champagne and Holland Rose) are delicious eaten “raw”, but unfortunately the birds know this too and an intact necklace of pink currants is a rare thing.

Figs are the best example we have for the superiority of tree ripened fruit, harvested au point. Against the south facing wall these trees produce a reliable crop of 30-50 fruits per tree, each one picked as it takes on the appearance of a plump raindrop about to fall from a twig, then carried to the shop like precious cargo.

White Marseille start by mid July, then the more dense fleshed Brown Turkey and the delicate Rouge de Bordeaux. Given an Indian Summer we get a second crop in October, or the unripe crop can be made into green fig chutney.

Other Mediterranean fruit we grow with mixed degrees of success are peaches, nectarine and apricots. Given a south facing wall and no late frost these will all crop reliably.

We have 14 varieties of apple, the most popular top fruit. Tree ripened top fruit bears little resemblance to the kind of fruit available in the supermarket; it has its full compliment of natural sugars, goodness and flavour.

These trees are all grown on M9 semi-dwarf rooting stock, and despite the unimpressive size of the trees, they are fully mature and produce 50-80 fruits each per year.

We get a less reliable crop of pears. Really they prefer damp marshy ground, so our drought prone sand is not ideal.
Nevertheless, last year these trees produced a bumper crop, and still seem a little hungover as a result.

Varieties include Beth, Doyenne de Comice, and Williams Bon Chretieu. One of life’s great treats, at the end of the summer as the nights cool and the colours start to turn, is of feasting upon a fully tree ripened pear, the syrupy juice running off your chin!