Kitchen Garden Forum

my young daughter and i have a raspberry bush and i dont have much knowledge on fruit growing does anybody have any tips for maintaining it and what im meant to do be doing with it at the moment?

Do you have any more details? Variety? Summer fruiting? Autumn fruiting?

raspberries are divided into two types, summer fruiting and autumn fruiting. either type will throw up shoots all over the place,which is their natural way of spreading. with summer fruiting varieties cut out any old dead canes now fruits will form on the new canes which grew last year. autumn fruiting ones are cut completely down to the ground over winter , any time before they start to grow again, new canes will grow from the base and fruit wll form in late summer early autumn. the books say they need supporting on posts and wires but ours are happy growing unsupported to 4ft or so.

Hello Jumping Bean
As you probably don't know whether you've got a summer or autumn type of raspberry, I think the best thing you can do is to hedge your bets on this one. I suggest you go over the bush and take out any thin poor growths and dead stuff, right down to the base, hopefully this will leave you with a dozen or so good strong stems about 5 -6 foot high.
Then remove about half of these strong stems. If you have summer type then the remaining stems will give you some good fruit this summer but if its an autumn type then you will get some strong new growths starting quite soon from the ground that will give you some late fruit. A summer type will give you new growths as well but they won't carry fruit until next year.
John

Very useful to read about the care of Autumn and Summer fruiting rasberries. At the risk of deviating slightly can anyone advise on the best time to plant canes (both autumn and summer) - I'd love to plant some. Also, how long before the canes will actually bear fruit for me.

If you can get them in now do so. Summer fruiting ones will not bear fruit until next year but the autumn fruiting ones will bear fruit this year.

Thanks pigletwillie!

hi, I've just had delivered some raspberry canes from ken muir, but can't plant them for a while. Is it ok just to put them in a pot with some soil over the roots for now?

Hello BigPepper
Its OK for a short while but at this time of year I'd really try to get them planted up as soon as pos.
Do get your raspbery bed as clean as possible - especially get out every trace of perennial weeds because it can be difficult to weed an established bed.

BTW How are your early pots doing?

John

hi john

they're for a friend actually, who's away for a bit. But I've planted them in a bed as normal and will dig them up in a week or so with lots of soil so as not to disturb the roots.

My weed-clearance on my real raspberry bed has been a disaster - grass all over it. Can I use Weedol 2 or will it kill the canes as well?

As for the early potatoes, I had a look under the plastic today and there are signs of life! Two haulms (if that's the word) have emerged... will cut crosses in the plastic to let them through when they get a bit bigger.

v best

Alex

Hello BigPepper
I tried to be clever last year and used weedol on part of my raspberry bed where the weeds had taken hold. I thought it would only affect the green weeds and leave the woody canes alone. Not so and I lost several canes!
So its back to hand weeding again.
John

PS Good luck with the early pots - keep some fleece handy though in case we get caught out by a late frost.

all our raspberries, currants, apples etc are surrounded by grass, we just trim with mower or stimmer as required, the bushes and trees dont seem to know that the experts say there is supposed to be weed free bare soil