I’m beginning to harbour a suspicion that the amount of raspberries and blackberries we are producing at the allotment is rather out of proportion to what we need. We produced a batch of raspberry conserve recently and I discovered that we already had enough homemade jam in the cupboards that we probably don’t need any more for several years!

Time to start thinking about rejigging the balance – for example, we could do with a lot more blackcurrant bushes, which produce fruit earlier in the year and which aren’t presently producing anything like a glut.

I’ll probably also drop or at least seriously reduce the jostaberry bushes, which are now quite large but barely seem to produce any fruit at all. Perhaps a decent gooseberry or two would make a good substitute? They say grow what you want to eat but I’m definitely ready to add the second part, “… but not too much of it”.