In the fruit garden

Raspberries
Your raspberries should be well into flowering by now. With all the wet weather, it is very likely that fruit will have been infected with grey mould, although this will not be visible yet. As soon as fruit show symptoms of rot, remove them, so that they do not infect their neighbours.
There is probably an abundance of young cane appearing now too. Some of this will need removing, so take out the weaker ones to leave about eight new canes per metre of row.
If you have had trouble with birds eating your fruit in the past, now is the time to get some netting ready.

Strawberries
The first of your strawberries should now be ripe. As with the raspberries, rots are likely, so keep on top of them by removing any infected fruit you see. Runners will begin to appear soon, so if you’re planning a new plot, you may want to propagate using these. To stop disease spreading, you could take runner tips in a few weeks, and treat them like cuttings, placing them in a mist propagator in a peat/sand compost until they root. This will give really strong runners which can be planted out in Autumn, and will give fruit next year.

Apples and Plums
If you have not had bad frost, and see plenty of fruit, now is the time to do your thinning. If you leave too many fruits on the tree, none will taste well, so remove the smaller ones by hand, leaving one plum on every two inches (5cm) of branch, and one apple per four inches (10cm) of branch.

Last year's Summer garden advice

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Recipe for Strawberry smoothee:

1 punnet (300g) strawberries
Half a banana
200-400ml apple juice

Put the strawberries and banana into a blender and operate until smooth. Add 200 – 400 ml of apple juice (depending on desired thickness) and mix briefly.

Serve cold.

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