Plow Maker Farms

 

Raspberries

Why Grow Raspberries?

Raspberries are tasty. For me that is all the reason I need to grow the delicious red berries. If you need more persuasion however, read on.

Raspberries, like many other berries, are extremely high in antioxidants and other healthy anti-inflammatory phytonutrients.

Growth habit

Don't be fooled by all the press promoting raspberries as delicate little bushes that need to be cuddled. Raspberry plants are akin to weeds. Namely, they grow with a vigor normally only seen in members of the invasive thistle family. This is good and bad. It is good if you want many healthy raspberry plants and it is bad if you want your berries to respect their garden boundaries.

Most raspberries can propagate themselves from the root and send up small shoots from all sides of the plant; sometimes up to several feet away. These shoots quickly become towering canes creating a forest of thorny berries. There is a reason wild raspberry canes are referred to as a thicket or bramble patch.

From my experience, most varieties will lie low the first year and send up only a few shoots. Once you are fooled into complacency the real sprouting begins. This means that raspberries require pruning multiple times a year if you want to maintain any sort of control over them.

We are growing several varieties of raspberries. Last year our 3-year old raspberry canes were so large and vigorous that they spread across their allotted space to join with nearby berry rows. Some of the varieties grew to over twelve feet tall, prompting our neighbors to ask what plant was growing in our field. When told raspberries they informed us that their raspberries did not look like that!

This sounds like a good problem to have but it was tough to brave the thick thorny rows to pick the delicious and abundant fruit. We tried to tie the giant canes closer together but they defied our best efforts to prevent intermingling with their neighbors and grew thicker than ever in protest. Some of our more sensitive farm members even started complaining about the gigantic plants making it impossible to pick berries. It was a bit like a humble brag, the raspberry plants are so happy and vigorous that we can't get into the berries #farmerproblems.

The raspberry rows were originally planted 6 feet apart. This seemed like enough of a division when the plants were small and cute. In addition we had pruned them to a thin line that winter, so we knew that harsh pruning wouldn't solve the problem. Sadly we knew of only one fix for this problem and it involved digging up every other row of berries. Otherwise, this problem would only get worse each year.

So we got out our shovels and started digging. If you haven't dug raspberries before I highly recommend heavy gloves. Those cute little fabric gloves with flowers on them are not going to cut it! To make more room for our happy berries we transplanted every other row to a new planting this March. This gave the berries twelve feet between rows.

Interesting Facts about Raspberries:

If you look closely you can see that individual raspberries are not a single fruit. They are a collection of smaller fruit called a drupelet.

Raspberries were first used as a medicinal herb. The roots and blossoms were used for eye ointments or made into a tea for stomach and throat ailments.

Raspberries came to the Americas in the 1700 century.

Supposively their are two types of raspberries.

Summer-bearing or summer-fruiting raspberries bear one crop in the summer; normally June or July.

Fall-bearing, fall-fruiting, or ever-bearing raspberries bear a crop in the fall and one the naext summer.

Why you should buy organic raspberries

Raspberries are on the list of fruits likely to harbor pesticide residue. In addition to a heavy spray schedule, many commercial growers use fumigation with methyl bromide to control raspberry pests.