Making the most of my raspberries

This year my raspberry bushes lost their leaves quite late.  It was July before all leaves had fallen off and bushes had gone dormant.  This was the moment I had been waiting for because, after being in the same spot for a decade, my raspberry patch was going to move house.

I started by taking the tops of all the canes to make it easier to move them.  After that the area looked like this:

This raspberry patch (around 5.4 sq. metres) has been very productive. I started it ten years ago, when I did not have much time. I bought quite a few canes (raspberry canes were cheap then), dug holes in the not very good clayey soil, spreading them out over the area, covered the soil with three bags of sheep manure and watered the area well.

Without giving it too much thought I had done most of what raspberries need: good drainage (mine did not have that, but were on a slope, so that did the trick), good soil, all-year-round full sun and ample water.

There are two types of raspberries

Type 1 - fruit on first year wood
These varieties produce fruit in mid-summer. After that branches die.  At the end of the season you can cut off all branches just above ground level.  New branches will form from early spring onwards, and fruit will form on them some months later. Branches are often long and may need support.

Type 2 - fruit on second year wood

These varieties produce fruit in spring, and then (most years) a somewhat smaller crop in autumn.  Raspberries are formed on branches that formed last year.  After that these branches die in most cases.  In rare cases second year wood stays alive for another year and bears fruit once more.  When you prune the bushes in mid winter, you remove only the dead wood. Branches are generally somewhat shorter than Type 1 raspberries and may not need any support.

There recently was a discussion on our Food Gardeners Tasmania Facebook page about pruning raspberries. Discussion centred on the fact that people had mixed the two types of raspberries when planting, and now no longer new which type was which, and how to prune them.  

The best way to avoid this problem is to clearly separate the two types, in other words, put all the Type 1s together and then the Type 2s in a different bed, or clearly separated from the Type 1s in the same bed.  Pruning at the end of the season will then not be confusing.

But how about a different approach that makes separating the two types less important?

• Pruning raspberries means removing dead canes. Dead canes look different from ones that are alive.  Dead canes often have a red-silvery colour, whereas alive ones are mostly light-brown (see photo below). To find out whether a cane that you suspect to be dead, is really dead, grab it and then push it down quickly. This action will break the cane if it is dead. Remove the broken cane. I only use secateurs for branches that are alive, and that are too long or sticking out.
• If you prune in this manner and therefore only remove dead branches, then you don't need to be aware whether plants are Type 1 or Type 2. 
• If you would not prune your raspberries at all during their dormant period, or leave some dead wood standing, that does not in any way lower your crop the next season. Dead branches may just look untidy or clutter up space.  They are dead, so as far as the plant is concerned, they are no longer part of it, and won't influence next year's crop in any way.

The photo above shows five raspberry canes.  Number two from the left is alive (it is light brown), the rest is red-silvery and dead.

My year-round maintenance of my raspberry patch:

1. In the middle of winter I remove dead canes as described above.
2. I then weed the whole patch
3. After weeding I apply a fair amount of complete organic fertilizer (Steve Solomon COF).
4. And finish by covering the whole patch with a thick layer of sheep poo (3 or 4 bags).
5. In late October I cover the area completely with a net.
6. From mid November until early January we pick, and pick, and water well if there is no rain.
7. We remove the net when production comes to an end, usually around just before Christmas.
8. Often we pick a second smaller number of raspberries in March.

Over the years my bushes began to conquer the whole patch.  They were so vigorous that I decided to make a border of dug-in concrete blocks, so they would not take over the paths.  As the bushes spread, so did the crop.  In 2010 I picked 10.9 kilograms of raspberries.  In 2011 the end result was 12 kilograms.

Raspberries are at their sweetest when they are dark-red and almost fall off the bush.  By consistently picking berries at this stage of ripeness every day or every two days during the picking season, the taste of your crop will surpass any raspberries that were picked commercially.

Straight from the bush put your raspberries in shallow trays so they are not crushed.  After picking, eat them or freeze them or make jam out of them as soon as you can.  We love raspberries.  We have never had too many.

I know my method of growing raspberries may be a bit unusual.  Most people will plant single canes in rows along trellises with paths in between.  That is absolutely fine, except that you would need half an acre to accommodate all the canes I have in my 5.4 square-metre patch!

There was one thing I had done a bit wrong with my raspberry area: it was too wide.  This meant that picking berries in the middle of 'the jungle' was always hard work, so, after ten years, and new ideas of what needed to be in the garden and where, we decided to create a new raspberry patch elsewhere in the garden.

I took all the weeds out so I could see where each clump was, then made sure each clump came out with soil attached.  If you buy raspberry canes you will probably get them in soil dust.  That is fine.  Whatever you do, make sure the canes do not dry out before you plant them.  In my case they went straight from the old patch to the new one, so plants were out of the ground for only a short time. 

Here is the result:

Raspberry Patch Version 2 is the same number of square meters as the Raspberry Patch Version 1, but it is longer and narrower, just right for being able to easily reach the centre from paths along both sides.  Concrete blocks surround the whole area.  Very good soil with COF will mean some berries this summer because raspberries fruit on branches formed the previous season.  However, it will take a few years for this patch to become fully productive.

I am going to create frames from re-inforced steel rods with standard size irrigation hose on top (see foreground).  The arcs will be inter-connected horizontally by means of metal wire.  That should provide a solid supporting structure for netting.

And then we are hopefully ready for quite a lot of this (nom nom):

Don't pick the one on the left, it is not quite ripe yet!

Nine years later:

It is now 2022 and the raspberry patch in the photo above now looks like this:

I fertilise the patch each winter.  We have also now put drip irrigation in it, and this means that we get a second crop around the end of March.

Crops since planting the canes in this spot have fluctuated, depending on how much time we had to pick each season and how much rain there was.  The yearly crop has varied between 7 and 11 kilograms of raspberries.  We eat them fresh and turn them in our most favourite jam.

Have a great raspberry season!