Raspberries are dead easy to grow if you follow a few easy rules of thumb. Here is our basic guide to getting your raspberries from sticks-in-a-bag to berries-in-a-bowl.
Bringing your canes home
When you collect your canes from us, they will be in a plastic bag with some peat moss and sawdust. Plants sold as un-planted roots are called “bare root” plants. The single most important thing to remember when dealing with any sort of bare root plant is to keep them cool and moist. If the roots dry out, the plant will either die immediately or struggle for a while before packing it in. Either way, not a good result.
Keeping the roots moist until planting is easy. While they are in the bag they are packaged in, they will be fine for two days so long as the bag stays cool and out of the sun. If it is left in the sun, the bag will act as a greenhouse and literally cook the roots, in which case there’s no point planting them anywhere but your compost bin. Do not bring the bag inside when you get home; leave it either in an unheated garage or shed, or somewhere outside (making sure that the spot you leave it will not be exposed to direct sunlight at any point in the day).
Choosing a spot
Once your bag is safely home, it’s time to plant the canes. When choosing where to put your raspberries, keep two things in mind: Firstly, they need as much direct sun as possible (six hours at the very least). Secondly, they will need regular water, so either make sure that they are somewhere the hose will reach, or look into starting a serious bicep-building routine in preparation for lugging hundreds of pounds of water over the course of the summer.
Raspberries aren’t too picky about soil but, like most plants, they won’t be happy in solid clay or extremely sandy soil. Do not plant the canes anywhere that has standing water over the winter – they will rot.
You can grow raspberries in the ground in a bed as narrow as 18 inches wide, and 18 inches long for every can you have. So if you have five canes, you could grow them in a bed as small as 18 inches wide by 90 inches long. If you have ten canes, you could grow them in a bed 18 inches wide by 180 inches long, or 36 inches wide by 90 inches long if you double up the rows. Play around with the bed configuration all you want, just make sure that plants are 18 inches away from one another, and at least 8 inches away from the edge of the bed.
If you are planting in raised beds, plants should be 18 inches apart, and should also be 18 inches away from the wall of the bed. If you were planting five canes in a raised bed, it should be 36 inches wide and 90 inches long.
If you are planting in containers, each plant should be in its own large pot. Alternately, you could plant three canes in a large half-barrel.
If you don’t follow these spacing instructions, you will still get raspberries and your plants will probably be fine. But production will be much better, and the risk of disease much lower, if you keep to those rules.
When you have chosen your raspberry site, make sure it is clear or weeds and grass. Like all plants that bear fruit, your raspberries will appreciate it is you work some snack food into their soil, either in the form of compost, an organic fertilizer (applied in very careful accordance with the package directions), or well-rotted manure. (Well-rotted manure is manure that doesn’t smell like manure, or look like manure. Well-rotted manure just looks and smells like dirt.) The very best source for soil amendments, and anything else horticultural, is Integrity Sales & Distributors on Keating Cross Road.*
If you don’t amend your soil, your raspberries won’t produce as much, but will likely be just fine. (The exception to this statement is infill houses or new developments, where the “soil” is often just a dusting of topsoil on top of rocky, dusty, nutrient-less aggregate. If you suspect this is the case at your house, feel free to get in touch to discuss how to fix it.)
Planting
When your site is prepped and you’re ready to plant your canes, dig a trench about 6 inches deep down the middle of the bed you’re planting them in, piling up the soil from the trench right beside it as you go along. Place your canes in, 18 inches apart. Then, working one cane at a time, position the cane upright and push the soil back into the trench in such a way that the topmost roots on the cane are about 2 inches below the surface. Repeat with each cane. Firm up the soil around the cane, and then go get the hose. Using a gentle shower-type setting, water the entire trench until water pools a bit on top (about three to five minutes). This will cause soil to run down into any little air pockets and ensure that all the roots are in contact with soil. Even out the soil on top if necessary. If you want to keep the weeds down and reduce your watering, dress the top of the bed with a couple of inches of bark mulch or dead leaves.
Now what?
Now, you wait! It is possible you will get a few berries this year, but most of these plants will not bear fruit until 2021. Keep the plants well-watered – a long drink every three days in the heat of the summer (much more in raised beds, much much more in containers). To tell if your raspberries need water, stick your finger two inches deep into the soil. If it’s dry, get the hose. They will not be shy about telling you if you’ve left them too long without water - wilted leaves mean they need a drink, and are also an indicator that you need to be watering more often. When watering raspberries (or any other plant) do your best to water right at the roots and keep the water off the leaves. Wet leaves promote disease and fungus. Yuck.
What should I do in the Fall?
This fall, do nothing. Leave the whole plant alone until the fall of 2021. At that time, you will have collected a harvest. Once the canes start to die back, cut down all of the canes which bore fruit that year – they have done their job and will die soon. Do not cut down the new canes that grew – those ones will give you fruit next year.
Put another way: with the exception of the first year, this type of raspberry always has two different types of canes growing – mature canes that bear fruit, and baby canes that will produce next year’s fruit. The scientific lingo on this is floricanes (mature, fruit-bearing canes) and primocanes (immature canes that will bear fruit next year). There are some varieties that fruit on primocanes – Nova is not one of them (keep that in mind if you’re googling “how to prune raspberries”). So every year, when the plant has stopped producing, you cut down the canes that produced and leave the others for next year.
There are some schools of thought that suggest tying the canes down in an arch-shape over the winter will promote greater productivity. I haven’t tried this, but it’s worth looking into if you like experimenting with this sort of thing.
Harvesting
Next year, when the berries are ready, keep them picked every two or three days (people with small children will find this task miraculously takes care of itself). Store them dry to extend their shelf life (if they make it into the house without being devoured). Nova raspberries are great for jam if you can keep your family away from them for long enough to make it.
And that's about all there is to it! Happy gardening!
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*Integrity is a very intimidating place, because it is full of very mysterious, professional horticultural and farm supplies, and everyone who shops there seems to know exactly what they’re doing. But the quality of what they sell is better than anywhere else, and the prices are lower. If you haven’t been there before and are a keen gardener, it’s worth powering through the crippling imposter-syndrome you will experience the second you walk in the door. Bring your phone in so you can stand in front of the wall of fertilizer, googling weird number combinations for half an hour. Or ask the staff, most of whom are either very knowledgeable or able to direct you to someone who is. Be warned that if you’re in there while it’s busy, they won’t have much time to chat.
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