A great surprise....and then????

[Dixana]

I've been meaning to post this but very flaky lately. Last week my hubby hauled a ton of plants for a nursery in NJ to MN.
When he came home he brought me 6 very ugly dead looking sticks with roots. RASPBERRIES!!! YAY! He can be such a sweety some days!
One problem...he knows NOTHING about them. No idea what kind they are, if they produce yearly or every other... What should I do with them?
For the time being they are sitting in a very chilly corner of our basement with the roots wrapped in paper.
When can/should they be planted? Then what do I do with them?

[lorax]

Keep them that way, and then plant them as soon as the frost has left the ground in the springtime, in a spot that gets at least 50% sun if possible, and full sun preferably. They most likely won't bear for you this year (raspberries bear on second-year canes) but next year they'll go nuts. I'd plan a bed for them and dig in some barrier to about 2 feet along the edges if you don't want them to take over. I like HD poly bamboo barrier, but rocks or metal will also work.

Most raspberries are yearly everbearers once they're established - if you've got any experience with blackberry, they're pretty much the same thing, but more cane-y and less bramble-y. In Zone 3a / 2b they started producing in late May to early June and lasted until the frosts came, at which point the canes would die, we'd go in and hack out the ones that had fruited that year, and just let them sit until spring.

[Dixana]

I actually have a GREAT spot for them all planned out. Our backyard has a 3 foot high cement barrier and about 1-2' back from the cement is a chain link fence. Perfect place for them I think
And if the spread to the church lot, more power to em, better than the mess of weeds they have over there!!

As soon as we start getting a thaw I'm going to dig some of ground out back there and cover the entire ledge in newspaper and cover it in compost. There's a lot of random weeds back there.
And that godforsaken mulberry Spring is coming evil plant be prepared to die.....


Oops, forgot the question, hehe. So just plant them and that's it? How far apart should they be?

[lorax]

About a foot or so, but in my experience, spacing doesn't really matter all that much.

Other than that, meh. Even close to the arctic circle, they're weeds. They'll thrive with very little basic care other than the culling of the canes that have fruited that season. If you fertilize them or care for them in any way while they're growing other than to give them water if it hasn't rained in the past few days, they'll just get taller and more vigorous.

Eventually, you'll figure out what watering schedule is best for your area to give you nice big fruits (and water is the key there - you can grow raspberries as xeric plants, but they'll revert to their wild habits of throwing lots and lots of very small and very sour fruits. If you're diligent about water, you'll get the same volume of fruits, but bigger, sweeter, and juicier.)

[cynthia_h]

Ladies, this is an excellent discussion, but I'm moving it to Fruit Cultivation and leaving a tracker behind so that others can find it.

Cynthia H.
/mod hat on/

[JONA878]

As Lorax says Cynthia ...Rasps are of one of two types.
By nature they are a crop that produces its fruit on two year old cane.
However over the last twenty years or so the Primo -cane raspberry has been bred a lot more and that crops on one year old wood.

You need to find out which you have as the method of pruning them is different.

So after planting this year the new cane growing from the roots will tell you which type it is.
If it produces berries on its new wood this year then it is a primo-cane type.
Crop it this year and then you can cut the cane down to ground level for new cane next year to produce fruit. It will then crop steadily throughout the summer months.
Support for this type can be kept simple with just a couple of posts and some wire to hold the cane up while it is in crop.

If it does not produce any fruit this year on the new cane then it is probably a traditional Floricane type and the new cane needs tying to a support wire as it will only crop on its second year of growth so needs to over winter held firmly to stop wind damage which can crack or snap it.
Floricane types need to be thinned to around six-eight canes per root head. This will alow spacing them about every six inches along the wire and produce much stronger cane for cropping.
They crop in one big go over just two or three weeks and you then can cut the fruited cane down and leave the new cane to grow on for the following year.

Good luck...they are such a super fruit.