Blackberry Oregon Thornless

The wet summer has continued - with no chance to get out for an entire week!
No rain today in Nottinghamshire, but serious flooding continues in southern and central England. Power and drinking water have been lost to thousands of people whose homes and lives have been destroyed. Farmland has been ruined for cropping this season in large parts of England. More rain is forecast!


I have now lifted all of the summer onions and brought them home for drying. Their hollow green stalks had become a reservoir for rain water and their stems above the bulbs were showing signs of rot.

Onions need a good baking in the sun to store properly. I have some in the greenhouse and others being stored in the garage overnight and brought out into the sun - when it shines!

Ripe soft fruit has been affected by the rain, but developing fruit has enjoyed the lashings of water. Our blackberry Oregon Thornless is showing great promise for an excellent crop. The berries are shaping up nicely. Oregon Thornless is a vigorous, heavy fruiting blackberry but as its name indicates, is without the nasty thorns that make picking ripe blackberries a scratchy business. We first saw and admired it at the Garden Organic garden at Ryton, Nr. Coventry.

The July garden is usually bursting with growth. This year, for the first time, we have bare soil where crops have finished too early. The challenge will be to find crops that fit into our rotation system so that we can use the ground productively.