Growing Raspberries

by Doug
(in his garden)

Let's deal with the basics of growing raspberries and give you a link where you can ask more questions about them (see bottom)

Basic Biology of Plant

The regular canes produce a cane in year one and then that cane produces fruit in year 2. After fruiting, the cane will die over the following winter.

This means you have to keep both one and two year canes alive and thriving and prune out the dead 3-year canes.

Everbearing canes: These will produce a fruit set in the fall of their first year and then a fruit set in July of the second year. Then they should be removed.


How To Grow: Quick Summary

Sunlight: Full sunshine.
Water: Even - drought will produce a limited crop of small hard berries
Soils: The higher the organic matter, the better (organic matter evens out soil moisture)


Planting

Put canes 18-inches apart in rows

Pruning Raspberries

Regular Canes

1) I never prune the actual canes.

2) I do remove all dead and dying canes in very early spring (they'll be grey and bark splitting)

3) I only allow 6 mature and healthy canes per square foot of row. All dead and weak/spindly canes are cut right to the ground


Everbearing Canes

Everbearing plants grow like regular berries except the new canes produce a crop of berries on new wood in the fall.

A new cane produces a small crop of berries in the fall, overwinters and produces a second crop in July. Then it procedes to die in the fall/winter.

You can get both a fall and spring crop by allowing the first year canes to set fruit in the fall and then allowing them to overwinter and produce again in July. Prune out all dead, weak as above with same spacing.

To only get a fall crop, mow everything to the ground in the early spring and only allow the new growth to produce a fruit set.



Harvesting

You'll know the berry is ripe when you can put your fingertips on it and gently pulling – separate it from the core.

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