T his time last year, when my veg patch was feeling chaotic, I decided to make a big and fairly consequential change to my setup – devoting one of my five annual beds to perennial fruit. I figured that it would be less effort, more bang-for-your-buck and, importantly, less water and resource-intensive once the plants were settled in. It felt very daring to give up the sunniest bed in a relatively small space but now that the tayberries are here, I’m seeing that my bold decision has really paid off.

Tayberries are a delightful cross between a raspberry and a blackberry that grows vigorously and fruits abundantly with the right care. I purchased my tayberries as small potted plants, although it tends to be cheaper to buy them as bare root stock in winter. If you’re fortunate enough to know someone who has an established tayberry, plants can be readily propagated through tip layering – rooting long branches when they touch the ground.

As with all berries, tayberries grow best in a sunny bed that is free of perennial weeds and liberally mulched with compost. Water generously while your plants are rooting down. Once established they shouldn’t need so much supplementry watering.

Tayberries are ready to harvest when the fruits turn deep red and come away from the stem easily

Tayberries fruit on the second year’s wood so if you have space, ideally train each year’s stems in different directions. If, like me, you don’t have the room to do this,you’ll have the prickly job of identifying and cutting back the stems after they’ve fruited. Be sure to wear thorn-proof gloves and long sleeves!

All blackberry hybrids are self-fertile, but as with all plants that require pollination to bear fruit, planting companion plants that attract pollinators can improve yields.

skip past newsletter promotion

Free newsletter | Weekly

The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.

Preview latest

Enter your email

after newsletter promotion

Unhappy with your garden plot? Try pretending you’ve just moved in Read more

Tayberries are ready to harvest when the fruits turn deep red and come away from the stem easily. As with other soft fruit, they need to be picked with care to retain their shape. This and the difficulty of transporting them is why soft fruit is expensive to buy and therefore worth growing. Tayberries can be eaten fresh, cooked into compotes and desserts, turned into jam and if there are any left over, freeze fairly well.

When I was choosing which fruit to plant, it was a toss-up between the sweetly floral tayberry and the more tart but similarly delicious loganberry, which requires the same care as they both descend from blackberries. In fact, all the advice in this column can also be applied to growing cultivated blackberries, which were bred to produce larger, juicier and sweeter fruit than those found out in the wild.

The Feast app: your most useful kitchen utensil

Get inspired with more than 7,000 recipes from our world-class cooks and smart, exclusive features to make cooking a breeze: build your own recipe collections, create a shopping list, search smarter and cook hands-free with cook mode.

Whether you’re looking for:

•Ali Slagle's app-exclusive delicious summer dishes

•Tom Hunt’s smart ideas to cut your kitchen waste

•Nigel Slater’s simple meals for two, perfect for quiet nights in

•Yotam Ottolenghi’s global flavours for special occasions

… you’ll find all these and more in the Feast app.

Start your 14-day free trial today

Download now

Explore more on these topics

Reuse this content

Comments (5)

Guardian Pick

I love tayberries - and the photo makes me want some NOWWW - but at my plot I grew an early fruiting thornless blackberry, which was even less trouble (all I did was cut its vines back each year after fruiting, and thread the new growth along my fence top in replacement).

I didn't use a sunny space, or even a proper bed. My blackberry and the Autumn rasps grew happily by (and as part of) the fence in a semishaded margin of the plot, with…

Jump to comment

Tenthred 3 hours ago

Guardian Pick

I didn't use a sunny space, or even a proper bed. My blackberry and the Autumn rasps grew happily by (and as part of) the fence in a semishaded margin of the plot, with…

Jump to comment

Tenthred 3 hours ago

View more comments

Got a sunny bed going spare? Tayberries offer great bang for your buck

Support the Guardian

Got a sunny bed going spare? Tayberries offer great bang for your buck

The Feast app: your most useful kitchen utensil

Most viewed

Related stories

Related stories

More from Lifestyle

More from Lifestyle

Comments (5)

Comments (5)

Guardian Pick

Guardian Pick

Most viewed

Most viewed

Most viewed Across the Guardian

Louisiana: Republican attorney general indicted on criminal charges

Nationals’ Cavalli suspended seven games after ‘Sit down, boy’ comment sparks brawl

I’m in no mood to ‘celebrate’ America. Our country is broken and needs repair

Ali Khamenei’s six-day funeral expected to draw millions in Iran

Week in wildlife: Neil the seal, a pink grasshopper and condors in love

Trump ‘quite ill - and getting worse daily’, Rosie O’Donnell tells the Guardian after president posts AI video attacking her – as it happened

More than 100 passengers on US cruise ship sick from suspected norovirus

For allies and adversaries alike, America at 250 is a solid global citizen gone rogue

‘Hugging is forbidden’: women jailed for life – in pictures

Christian Brothers kept nine child abusers as members due to Gospel imperative to help ‘the needy’, court documents reveal

Most viewed in Life and style

Experience: I’ve found a four-leaf clover every day for three years

A new start after 60: I spent eight years thinking I had Parkinson’s. Then doctors ‘de-diagnosed’ me

My job provides financial stability but my passion has gone. What do I do?

The pet I’ll never forget: Holly, the beagle who chewed her way through my home and into my heart

This is how we do it: ‘I expected to be a little old spinster, but kinky sex broadened my horizons’

My rookie era: The Hunger Games made me think I’d be incredible at archery. So I picked up a bow to find out

You be the judge: should my girlfriend stop leaving piles of her hair and nails around the flat?

Are there places on Earth where humans haven’t been?

‘Smaller doses of exercise are a miracle cure’: 14 expert tips to protect your joints

Master your money: 11 experts share hard-earned tips to budget, invest and retire early

We Care About Your Privacy

How and why we process data