Anyone with good raspberry bush tips?

**MomToTwoBoys** · 04-16-2010, 10:16 AM

I am purchasing my raspberry bushes this weekend. We're heading out to a nursery to see if they have them in yet, then bringing them home and prepping the garden on Monday.

I have never, ever had raspberry bushes and would love some tips to keep them neat and ruly from those who have had them in the past.

We're planting them on the east-facing part of the house, which gets an insane amount of sunlight. From there, I have no idea what to do.

**Contrary Housewife** · 04-16-2010, 10:31 AM

Raspberries don't really do "neat". They put up long stalks called "canes" every year and this is what the fruit grows on. They can grow 6 ft high, and they will flop over. The bushes grow big and shaggy. If you trim them, you will loose fruit production.

You'll want some netting to keep the birds out once they discover your buffet.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 04-16-2010, 10:50 AM

I'm already telling DH I need some 8 foot 1x2s for posts. I might even get a hold of some broom sticks and twine to keep them with the posts.

We have tons of birds around here, so I'll keep the netting tip definitely close to heart.

**KeithBC** · 04-16-2010, 11:39 AM

What I did with our raspberries was to rig clothesline between a pair of posts at either end of the bed. I attached one end of the line to one post and put a hook at the other end, with a matching eyelet on the other post. That way, when canes decide to grow up outside the confines of the clothesline, I just unhook it at one end, run it around the wayward canes and reattach it.

I am still trying to figure out pruning. You need to know what type of raspberries - everbearing or biennial - you have. Traditionally, raspberry canes are biennial, meaning that a cane only bears fruit in its second year. The rule for pruning those is, in the fall, to cut back the canes that bore fruit, leaving unpruned the new canes that haven't born fruit.

However, everbearing raspberries have annual canes - the can bear fruit in their first year. No one talks about how to prune them. What I have learned is that "everbearing" simply means annual: they will bear their fruit late in their first year. But if you prune these canes (which will be all of them!), you won't have any second-year crop at all. You'd have to wait until the next year's new canes are old enough, late in the fall, to bear their fruit. So traditional pruning turns everbearing raspberries into late-season berries.

What I am trying now is to prune only half the canes. The ones I left last fall should bear a second-year crop this summer, hopefully early in the season. I'll then prune those this fall, while leaving this year's new canes for a second-year cop next year. I'll let you know next year how that works.

**Russ** · 04-16-2010, 11:51 AM

Originally Posted by KeithBC

However, everbearing raspberries have annual canes - the can bear fruit in their first year. No one talks about how to prune them. What I have learned is that "everbearing" simply means annual: they will bear their fruit late in their first year. But if you prune these canes (which will be all of them!), you won't have any second-year crop at all. You'd have to wait until the next year's new canes are old enough, late in the fall, to bear their fruit. So traditional pruning turns everbearing raspberries into late-season berries.

.

Simple. Have two areas of canes. Mow each one all the way down every other year.

**KeithBC** · 04-16-2010, 03:56 PM

Originally Posted by Russ

Simple. Have two areas of canes. Mow each one all the way down every other year.

Yup, that's more or less what I had in mind.

**krbshappy71** · 04-16-2010, 05:08 PM

Keep them away from your dogs. My dogs ate mine. One wouldn't think a dog would eat things with SPIKES ALL OVER IT but they did. Maybe the branches taste good while they are young?

Oh! Another point with dogs, my Sheltie would eat the fruit right off my friend's bush. So...ya...keep your dogs away or you'll be fighting more than birds for the fruit.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 04-16-2010, 06:47 PM

I don't have any dogs, but I am concerned now with any neighborhood dogs that may get into them.

I might invest in some fencing that's dogproof then.

**krbshappy71** · 04-16-2010, 07:26 PM

My dogs might just be crazy. But after losing four plants, even after attempting to fence the bushes off, I gave up. Bad dogs, no biscuit.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 04-17-2010, 10:47 AM

Yeah, we have dogs and skunks in the neighborhood, along with magpies and cats. We also have the occasional black squirrel (like the one that assaulted my herb garden last year) so fencing is pretty key for us this year.

**MomToTwoBoys** · 04-18-2010, 05:40 PM

So we decided to wait on the raspberry bushes. We had planned on buying them, along with the gooseberry bushes, but they didn't have many good plants in stock. The gooseberry bushes also weren't coming in for another two weeks.

I did buy netting to keep the animals away and some bamboo sticks to anchor the bushes to. I also have fencing that I used last year that'll work great for keeping the skunks out.

I found this awesome website for raspberry care that I wanted to pass along:

http://www.life123.com/home-garden/t...pberries.shtml