Suzanne's Mom's Blog

The warm, dry summer we enjoyed this year came to an end when August arrived bringing with it cooler, damper weather*. Funnily enough, damp weather favours the development of rusts on plants as well as on metal, although they’re nothing to do with each other!

Some of the older varieities of raspberry are particularly prone to raspberry rust (Phragmidium rubi-idaei). I have some Glen Ample canes – apparently it is the most common/popular summer fruiting variety in the UK – and they have rust (my Autumn fruiting varieities are, so far, rust-free). I class Glen Ample as an “older” variety, although it has only been on sale since the 1990s, so it’s not really so old.

Tell tale discolouration on the upper side of the raspberry leaf…

…the different spore types on the underside of the leaf

Rusts are fascinatingly complex organisms with a vocabulary all of their own. The…