This kind of thing (and its geopolitical implications) is probably what scares me most about climate change. With snow on the surrounding hills, here are our raspberries, shooting from the buds, before the leaves have even dropped completely. I’m a new hand with raspberries, so I called our long-time employee/’does everything’ guy David over to have a look. He and his family have been growing raspberries in the Huon for generations.
He couldn’t quite believe he was looking at raspberries when he saw them shooting so prolifically from the soil, so far from the main canes (I put some of that down to the very friable soil that still hasn’t had a tractor over it), and declared them to be at least three-four weeks early. Some of the buds on the canes are breaking open as well.
I haven’t looked at the monthly temperature data for the winter months yet, but I know from being outside in it that, despite the recent cold blast, we’ve had very few frosts, so in that sense it’s not surprising that the bushes would be ‘waking up’ early. I expect that what will happen next is that we’ll have a few very big frosts – and some quite late – which will damage tender shoots.
On the ‘positive’ side, I have juicy oranges ripening very nicely on the front lawn…