Your gardening questions answered: What’s wrong with my raspberries?

I planted bare-root raspberries “Autumn Bliss” a few years ago. The first year all but one plant died. Thinking I had neglected them, I bought more bare-root plants and planted them in the same bed and these all lived. In their first year, they only produced a few raspberries, but last year they fruited well.

However, when I picked them they fell apart in my hand. I haven’t pruned them back yet, but they are starting to bud. Do you think they have a virus and what should I do?

Much as I love them, raspberries can be challenging to grow well, demanding a very fertile, humus-rich, deep, moist but (crucially) free-draining, acid to neutral soil to flourish. Unfortunately, they’re also particularly prone to infection by a wide variety of viruses passed on to the plants via a number of potential vectors, which include aphids, mites, soil-based eelworms and pruning tools as well as infected pollen. Symptoms of virus infection vary widely according to the particular virus, but classic signs include dieback, stunted growth, yellowing of leaves, blotching/mottling/puckering of the leaves and poor fruiting, including the exact problem you’ve described which is quaintly known as “crumbly fruit”.

Confusingly, however, there are also other non-viral causes for “crumbly fruit”. Those causes aren’t yet fully understood by scientists but seem to be down to a complex combination of the particular variety of raspberry (some varieties are more vulnerable than others) and the growing conditions that the plant faces during fruit formation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the popular, late-fruiting variety “Autumn Bliss” is somewhat prone to this condition.

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