Raspberries and other brambles are incredibly easy to grow. Plant a bush the first year, get a handful of sweet berries to whet your appetite. Then watch as the brambles take off the following year and start producing dozens of beautiful, plump, juicy red raspberries.
The only downside to raspberries is that after a few seasons the brambles will ruthlessly invade your garden and eventually take over the entire plot unless you learn how to keep them in line. By “in line”, I mean that literally. Red Raspberry brambles left to grow without any discipline will create a dense thicket that will be impossible to harvest at more than just the periphery, which will cost you a lot of delicious fruit. Of course, the birds and rabbits will appreciate it. Rabbits love the protection of dense thickets of brambles as very few animals will dare to pursue or explore, due to the thorny bushes.
Below are the steps to keeping summer bearing red raspberry bushes “in line” to maximize fruit production. I learned these techniques from American Horticultural Society Pruning & Training (American Horticultural Society Practical Guides).
Establish a line for your raspberries
Train your raspberry bushes along a wall or fence to maintain a straight line. This will make it easier to get at all sides of the brambles and harvest as much fruit as possible. Any suckers that appear outside of the line you can uproot and compost or plant further down the line where needed. It’s very difficult to kill a raspberry sucker, so you needn’t be too concerned about delicacy when transplanting.
After you get a straight line created, tie the brambles snug to the fence or a wire grid connected to a wall. During the growing season, cap (prune) the brambles at about six feet to concentrate the plant’s energy on fruit production and not further growth. It will be hard to harvest a plant taller than you are.
Raspberries are a unique plant, in that their roots and crowns are perennial, while the canes are biennial. That means that the plant itself will live for many years, but the canes upon which fruit appear live only two years. Raspberry canes only fruit once-they grow on new wood from the previous season, so after the fruit is harvested, cut the canes to the ground on which the fruit appeared, as that cane will soon start dying off. After fruiting, you want all of that season’s remaining energy to be concentrated in producing strong, new canes.
How to plant raspberries
Raspberry canes are produced three ways: from the seeds of fruit that fall; from the root base of the previous year’s canes; and from suckers that grow straight up from the mother plant’s roots, which can be a foot or more distant from the mother plant.
The most important decision when planting raspberries is your site. Raspberries must have at minimum 6 hours of direct sun each day to produce fruit and they hate soggy, waterlogged soil. The canes will bear fruit in slightly shady areas, but fruit yield will be significantly lower than if that same plant was in full sun all day.
Raspberries can be purchased as dormant bare root plants or as potted plants. I recommend choosing a potted plant at your local garden center for best success.
Raspberries will grow in nearly any soil, but it’s an old wives tale that raspberries need acidic soil to thrive is not true. The soil just needs to drain well to keep the raspberries from having “wet feet”.
- Dig a hole at least twice as wide as the root of the plant, as raspberries roots need to spread.
- Plant the raspberry at the same level it was in the pot.
- Backfill with the same soil and add 2″ of compost around the root zone.
- Generally speaking, raspberries do not need to be fertilized unless there is a problem confirmed by a soil test.
- Water in well and provide at least 1″ of water each week in the absence of rainfall.
- Weed judiciously around the plant throughout the season to keep weeds from competing with the raspberries.
- Raspberries are bothered by very few pests and diseases, making them one of the easiest plants for your garden.
How to harvest raspberries
I don’t wear gloves to harvest, as the raspberry fruit is very delicate and tends to get crushed in a gloved hand. I’ve learned to accept the small amount of irritation on my forearms and hands the scratching from brambles cause. Raspberries hide everywhere, so examine each plant from as many angles as possible – you’ll see berries from one angle that you don’t see from another. Pick them when they’re perfectly ripe for the sweetest and less sour flavor.
As far as birds eating your berries – yes, they love them. The first time I bought bird netting to cover my plants, it became such a tangled mess that I found it all but impossible to harvest the berries. It’s better to let the birds take a little fruit off the top than to deal with the net you’ll find yourself tangled in. It’s the birds’ reward for keeping my garden free of pest insects!
This year I had a record raspberry harvest – more than 15 quarts from a 50-foot fence line – that’s hundreds of dollars of raspberries at market prices. I froze a few quarts, but the rest we ate on a daily basis. Delicious!
We garden in Pennsylvania, United States, zone 6B. Much of the info we share is based on gardening in our temperate area. But many of the flowers, vegetables, and fruit we write about can be grown in soil other than ours (clay) and significantly different weather conditions and elevations. You might need to choose specific varieties for your region, modify your garden, add soil amendments, or adjust the soil pH to match our results. Please check your local university extension website for specifics for your area.
