A glut can be berry nice indeed . . .

. . . but, while late summer is a time of plenty in the garden, the profusion presents some problems, even for gluttons

WHEN IT COMES to growing your own fruit and vegetables, it very often seems to be a case of feast or famine, of either too much or too little, too many or too few.

And so it can sometimes feel like gardeners have no sooner finished complaining about "the hungry gap" of spring than they've started sighing about the "glut" of late summer.

A glut, the dictionary tells us, is a supply of something that's much greater than what's needed or wanted. This explains why we urban farmers only use the word in reference to certain crops and not others - you never, for example, hear someone complain of a glut of raspberries, because most people (myself included) will eat them until they're coming out their ears. Like gluttons, in fact.

The late gardener Christopher Lloyd, without doubt, definitely belonged in this group. Writing about raspberries in his book Gardener Cook, he said the fruit was "unbeatable for sustained guzzling" and that he could happily eat raspberries every day without becoming sated. He was a fan of the autumn-fruiting variety, Autumn Bliss, as bred by Elizabeth Bliss in the East Malling Research Centre in Kent. So much so, in fact, that he considered its flavour to be superior to any of the main-cropping, summer raspberries.

In the OPW's walled garden in the Phoenix Park, gardeners Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn have been busily harvesting Autumn Bliss raspberries for several weeks, and there's still plenty more to come. "We planted four drills in April of last year, but already they're giving a great crop of fruit," says Meeda. The trick to growing a really good crop of raspberries, according to the two OPW gardeners, is to feed the plants generously, both with manure and with a general granular fertiliser in early spring.

Pruning is important also. "With Autumn Bliss, the fruit forms on the current season's growth, so you need to cut all the canes to the ground every winter. With the summer-fruiting types, it's slightly different - you prune back only the old canes after fruiting, leaving the young canes to bear raspberries the following year," says Meeda. "You also need to make sure that the plants get enough water, because raspberries need plenty of moisture to crop well," she adds. "Mulching with manure in springtime helps to stop the roots from drying out, particularly if there's a dry spell later on in the season."

The other important thing to remember, when planting, is that the autumn-cropping varieties should be kept well away from their summer-fruiting relatives. Otherwise, when it comes to pruning time, it's almost impossible to distinguish where one variety begins and the other ends, particularly as the young shoots or suckers tend to spread themselves around.

Aside from what Lloyd believed to be its superior flavour, the Autumn Bliss variety of raspberry has several other advantages over its earlier-fruiting cousins. For one thing, it doesn't need staking, which makes it a less labour-intensive choice for the busy gardener (also less costly, because you've saved the extra expense of stakes and wire). It has a much longer fruiting season (up to two months) as compared to the summer-fruiting types, which crop for an average of three weeks. It also has good aphid-resistance, making it less likely to succumb to viruses, which can be a problem with older, more traditional types.

Finally, because it fruits later in the season, Autumn Bliss is more likely to escape under the radar of hungry birds (they're often more spoilt for choice at this time of the year).

In the OPW's walled garden in the Phoenix Park, the blackbirds gorged themselves earlier in the year when the summer-fruiting varieties were ripening. "They were stuffing themselves," says Brian, adding that next year he and Meeda will be installing a proper fruit cage to protect the crop. But then that's raspberries for you - there's just never enough of them, even when you're a blackbird.

Courgettes

The same cannot be said for courgettes, which are one of those vegetables to which the word glut is all too easily applied. It's not that one dislikes courgettes, it's just that there suddenly seems to be too many of them at this time of year. Unlike other vegetables, you can't freeze them, which makes the courgette glut all the harder to bear. Thus, come late July/August, the urban farmer can often be seen attempting to offload a few oversized courgettes on his or her less than enthusiastic friends and relatives.

For that's the other bad thing about courgettes - they grow to vast dimensions impossibly quickly. Left to their own devices, they metamorphose into giant marrows within the space of what seems like a few days. Mindful of what they cost to buy in the shops, the urban farmer feels duty-bound to try and enjoy his or her bountiful harvest. The problem is that, nice as they are, there are only so many courgettes anyone can eat in any given week. Unlike raspberries, one quickly discovers, courgettes do not lend themselves easily to gluttony.

Luckily, it's a problem that Meeda and Brian don't have to worry too much about, as the next-door Phoenix Café is always happy to use any surplus vegetables that are available. It's a bit different for the individual gardener, however. And so it won't surprise you too much to hear that Christopher Lloyd was no great fan of this vegetable for that very reason. "I don't like being hounded by my vegetables," he said.

French Beans

Lloyd was a far greater fan of Dwarf French Beans - "the only kind I grow" he sniffed - and another vegetable that Meeda and Brian have been harvesting regularly over the last month. They sowed seed of a variety called Orlando in the nearby heated glasshouses back in mid-April, but didn't plant the young plants outside until early June because of the cold, wet spring.

"French beans are half-hardy annuals that hate cold and wet," says Brian. "If you sow or plant them too early outdoors, they'll either rot or get attacked by pests. And the kind of wet summer weather we've been having doesn't really suit them either."

That being said, the dwarf beans have cropped well in the walled garden despite the poor summer, producing lots of large, juicy green pods. Like most beans, the cropping period is extended when the pods are picked regularly (don't leave them to get large, stringy and over-coarse). You can also encourage extended cropping by covering the plants with a cloche in early autumn, which protects them from falling temperatures. Of course it all depends on how many Dwarf French Beans you've planted, and whether they've already produced a large enough crop to satisfy you. (They freeze very well, which is an important consideration when it comes to over-abundant crops).

So, can you have a glut of French beans? Lloyd didn't think so, for he called them "a delight" and even enjoyed the complicated ritual that he'd devised for picking them. He wasn't so kind about runner beans, however, a vegetable that definitely didn't bring out his inner glutton. "I find their texture unpleasing and their taste slightly rancid," he said dismissively. I'm guessing that one can safely presume that there was never any glut of these in his garden at Great Dixter.

• The OPW's Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4.30pm

• Next week Urban Farmerin Propertywill be about beetroot

• Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer

What to sow and plant this week:

Sow outside now:

Spring Cabbage; Endive; Kohl Rabi; Saladini; Winter Lettuce; Winter Spinach; Radish

Sow under cover now:

Broccoli Raab; Calabrese; Mini Cauliflowers; Radish; and many CCA (cut-and-come-again) crops like Mibuna, Mizuna, Oriental Mustard, Salad Rape, Winter Purslane and Sugar Loaf Chicory

Plant outside now:

Spring Cabbage; Autumn Onion Setts; Garlic; Winter Lettuce