Huttonian’s Ten Golden Rules for Soft Fruit. Sage saws and bleeding fingers1. Tallest Nettles are always near the most succulent raspberries. Especially when the wind is blowing.
2. Gloves for pulling up nettles are always in the house
3. Gloves thick enough to stop Gooseberry thorns are too thick to pick the Gooseberries
4.Raspberry bushes often have more fruit on them after you have just picked them than before you started.
5. The most juicy, delicious, bright red strawberry is the one you have just knelt on
6. There are more ripe blackcurrants at any one time than containers for them
7. If you have picked red currants for an hour and a half you have too few to do anything with.
8. If there is something cold, slippery and wriggling under your left hand in the middle of the red currant bush, think toad.
9.If you can strip a blackberry bush without drawing blood twice and shouting s**t you haven’t any blackberries.
10. If you have 6 perfect red rounded tomatoes the Village Horticultural Show was last week.
Last word of advice: if you have a pair of baggy shorts, cool and breezy, which allows free ventilation around vital parts, and if you plan to get stuck into those nettles and thistles you have been putting off all summer taking advantage of the best weather since 1976, 47, last year etc; and you wish to avoid inappropriate jokes about pricks and prickles pasted and cut on the internet and forwarded by callous offspring, leave them in the drawer.
