Fruit garden in the Summer

Fruit Garden in Summer

The soft fruit seasons will start and continue through for about 6 weeks, starting with the earliest strawberries through to the latest around mid July.
Soft fruit picking will take up a great deal of time with raspberries ripening in July with blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries following on for a short while after... but who knows the season may be good and could carry on to late summer
The first gooseberries should be ready around the end of June, with blackcurrants around the same time.
Apples and pears will be suffering from the drop.
Make sure that plums and peaches against walls do not run short of water

Strawberry runners should be removed, unless you want them for new plants... if you do make sure to peg the first runner from the plant down in the soil.... only use the first plant off the runner and the new plant should be fine. make sure the plants are netted... after all it is you who wants to enjoy the fruits.
Blackberries can be tip layered.... this is when the tips of new shoots are pegged down into the soil, this will cause the pegged tip to throw out roots for new plants
Melons will be swelling and extra growth should be pinched out - make sure they get lots of water at this time.
Peaches plums and cherries will start to ripen and the first apples could be ready.

Old (fruited) raspberry canes should be cut down to soil level and removed.... at this time poor and overcrowded canes should also be removed. Those remaining canes should be tied in.
Blackcurrants should be pruned so as to remove most of the old fruit branches either to ground level or to good new shoot. Those branches close to the ground should be removed as you will find that they will get stood on or the weight of fruit drags them to the floor.
Gooseberry and redcurrants can be summer pruned, ie cut back to the 5th basal cluster of leaves of that seasons growth. The new leading growths are allowed to remain until winter.
Clean up all weeds leave the straw mulch until winter, but renew where the soil is showing through.
Apples and pears trained as espaliers, cordons or other formal shapes can also be summer pruned.... finishing the job in winter. Remove the new sideshoots back to just above the fifth basal cluster, when their shoots has started to become firm and brown at the base but is still green at the tip, leaders are left uncut. If pruning is done to early it will result in secondary growth which will use up the trees energy unnecessarily, and maybe cut back by frost allowing entry for disease.
Some branches may be breaking under the weight of ripening fruit and branch propping may be necessary.
The plum and Morella cherry will also be ripening.