My raspberries were inches tall when I bought them- how long until yours produced fruit?
Most raspberries fruit on two year old canes. Expect fruit in your second growing season on the once green canes that will turn brown and woody in year two!
Propagating raspberries?
Raspberries make it really easy to multiply- they’ll send out suckers. They’ll pop up near the existing plant and all you have to do is dig them up and plant them where you’d like a new berry patch.
Full sun or partial shade?
I’ve got mine in a blend of both! Two in the front yard garden have full sun, two in the back have four hours of direct sun and the rest of the day they’re in dappled light, and three others are in dappled light most of the day with two hours of direct sun.
Kind of a Goldilocks situation. They’ll tolerate basically anything you throw at them but you’ve got to test it out to see what’s just right for your space.
The ones with the most production are our older berries which are in four hours of direct sun and dappled light the rest of the day. Their production is better because they’re older!
The full sun berries could use a touch of shade especially on those hot summer days. Their leaves are already feeling the heat with the heatwave we had last week.
The plants with the least amount of sun damage are the ones in two hours of direct sun. The two hours of direct sun bushes are producing just about the same amount that our oldest bushes (four hours of direct sun) did when they were that age.
I’d suggest some kind of partial shade for your cane berries. They thrive in woodland areas with shade so they should do the same in your yard. Plus it makes an otherwise unsuitable area productive!
Suggestions on a website to order good plants from (especially for colder zones)?
I’d always check your local nursery first! They’ll usually have plants in stock that are tailored for your zone. This may not always be an option so if you want to order online, I’d suggest checking out GrowOrganic.com or RareSeeds.com.
Most of our berries came from our local nursery but some of our specialty ones came from these two websites- I love them both!
Tips on keeping blackberries and raspberries contained?
Brambles are WILD. We let our raspberries do their thing the first two years and ignored trellising because the plants were still small. By the third year the raspberries were out of control and needed a structure.
Trellises and pruning are your friends when it comes to maintaining them. They’ll still look a little wild and do their own thing but this helps contain their chaos.
Pruning Floricane Fruit Bearing Blackberries
Do you have to deal with a lot of wasps because of the berry bushes?
Not at all! We’ve got wasps in the garden but they’re nowhere near the berries. They’re usually in our annual beds and go after pests!
The wasps were around our house before we added the garden and we haven’t seen an increase because of them. They’ll pick certain areas of the garden to nest in (usually our arch trellis in the backyard or the kids playground) so we’re just aware of where they’ll be most defensive if disturbed.
Special advice to help berry plants survive zone 7b winters?
Choose berries that are hardy in your zone and you shouldn’t have to do too much other than protect against late season frosts and freezes once the buds are in, blooms have opened, and or fruits have formed.
Going into winter the only berries that get special attention are our strawberries. We’ll mulch them in the fall with fallen leaves.
You can protect your berries in late winter with frost blankets if temperatures get too low or a frost or freeze will damage your crop. You’ll want to look up the critical temperatures for your specific varieties and plan accordingly.
We run into issues with late season freezes and have to cover our blueberries, currants, strawberries, and bush cherries. We’ll water deeply and use a frost blanket to keep them cozier than the outside temperature.
The blackberries, raspberries, and winter berries remain unaffected since the fruit doesn’t form as early on those plants.
After planting a raspberry bush- how long before you start to see a harvest like yours?
It depends on the number of bushes you have and the ages of the bushes.
We have two four year old bushes that will pump out 6oz each every day in the beginning of the season and will end up pushing out 1 lb a day during peak season. These two bushes have been our powerhouses the last few years!
We’ve got supplemental berries from other bushes (3) that are two years old and they’re putting out about 2 oz a day (total) in the beginning of the season and will ramp up with time.
We’ve added two more bushes up front that are one year old and we’re not seeing any kind of substantial harvests from them yet.
To see a harvest like the ones I post on Instagram- four years with two plants or two years with maybe 9-10 bushes.
What do you use to fertilize strawberries?
The bulk of our strawberries are planted in fruit tree guilds or directly under fruit trees. They benefit from the fruit tree fertilizer I give the trees. The fertilizer I use is from Down to Earth.
How do you get more raspberries? Prune? Self pollinate?
Pruning while dormant and monitoring for disease and pests will do you wonders! Picking early and often (once in the morning and once in the evening if you can) will help you beat the bugs and birds to your precious berries.
You’ll still loose some to pests- the ones we lose go to slugs or snails, but that’s just part of the #naturetax.
Pruning will give your plant the airflow it needs and help reduce the risk of disease. It also encourages branching. The more branching, the more berries! Removing spent canes makes an easier job of handpicking and fewer areas for pests to hide.
We don’t hand pollinate our berries- we leave that up to our pollinators!
Bonus: use the suckers to your advantage! Plant them in other areas that you’d like to have raspberries. Just remember, they won’t do anything the first year as they’re working on growing the canes that will produce fruit the following year.
HOW MANY BUSHES TO BE SELF SUFFICIENT?
This depends on a few things- how many people are in your house, what you use the berries for, how much you eat, etc.
We were self sufficient in berries the last few years- had enough for fresh eating (berries with breakfast every day in the summer, berries for desserts, mixed berry jams for the year, and tons of berries in the freezer for smoothies or baked goods in the winter.
The raspberries to get us to that level of self sufficiency were only two but we had a lot of other berry bushes providing for us as well (6 blackberry, 10 blueberries, probably 40-50 strawberries, and 4 currants.)
To be self sufficient in raspberries alone- I’d suggest about 7-8 for a family of four. The last two seasons we’ve only had the two adults and one small toddler to feed. Our youngest is now on whole foods this year and we’re feeding two berry LOVING toddlers and two parents. We used to have bowls piled up with extra fruit for preserving but this year it may not happen as we’re catching up with the increase in consumption.
We added two new raspberry bushes last year and plan on taking a few suckers from our existing plants and adding them in other spots around the yard to bring our total up to 9. It’ll take a few years for them to ramp up their production though.
How much space can you *really* get away with for berry bushes? Not much room over here!
Totally depends on how much sun you have and what room you have to spare. Our raspberries are up against our deck stairs and one bush takes up about a 2.5 x 5 ft space. We let these bushes get pretty big though since that’s where the bulk of our berries are coming from. You can cut them back into a smaller square footage area, but the amount you’ll harvest will decrease as well.
Blackberries can be trained along existing fence lines and you’d just need about one foot of space (deep) so they have room to spread out as they grow along the fence. It depends on the variety, but blackberries will get anywhere from 5-8 feet tall.
Trailing blackberries are better suited to growing along fences and upright blackberries will want to grow up- literally. I prefer the trailing blackberries because I can tuck them in and they’re easier to train them where I want them to grow.
Blueberries can be grown in ground or in containers. Our container blueberries are perfectly happy in 15 gallon containers. It depends on the variety you’re growing but they can get pretty tall. Look for smaller container sized blueberries if you’re tight on space!
I’m in the beginning of my raspberry season. Should I fertilize them??
Wait for spring! I like to fertilize going into the season as opposed to during.
How long until they bear fruit?
Raspberries usually fruit on second year canes. It depends on the age of your plant when you purchased it but you can expect fruit in your second year growing them. The wait is worth it!
What are the white fuzzy bugs on my raspberries??
I’d have to see it to know for sure but it could be wooly aphids or mealybugs. The iNaturalist app may be able to tell you if you can get a picture of them.
Cost effective vertical growing ideas? Arches and trellises can be expensive!
I feel this on a deep level! Most of our trellises are DIY ones. For blackberries and raspberries we’ve repurposed a lot of scrap wood around our house and fence posts from old projects.
We’ll take 4-5 foot posts and bury them 1-2 feet in the ground every 5-6 feet. If you don’t have scrap wood, extra t posts work as well. You’ll want to make sure they’re buried in the ground well because the weight of the plants adds up quick when they’re in active growth.
We’ll add two eye screws to the sides of the posts or long nails (literally whatever we have extra of) at the top and middle sections. From there we thread and secure galvanized wire to the screws so the wire goes from one post to the next and keeps the canes upright and in between the wire.
Here’s an idea of what we used- you should be able to find these at your local hardware store. It’s not the pretty ones you see on Pinterest, but it gets the job done!
Any advice on growing berries in containers?
Containers dry out quicker than plants grown in ground so make sure you stay on top of watering and don’t forget to amend your soil with a fertilizer, compost, or other food they may need. You’ll need to pay attention to berry bushes grown in containers and expect to pot them up every few years if you want them to keep getting larger!
There are some specific blackberries and raspberries that are marketed for container growing. Check those varieties out!
Favorite strawberry variety?
We love our Gasana variety! They’ve got pink flowers and have a very sweet flavor with hints of pineapple.
Our kids go nuts for alpine strawberries as well which we grow in containers on the deck. The mignonette and heirloom pineapple can’t be beat!
Raspberry isn’t fruiting, it has leaves, brown canes from last year, and new canes are green. Is it a dud?
It’s hard to know whats going on without being able to know what conditions its grown in. Could be that it needs food, more sunlight, was hit by a late season frost, over pruned, could benefit from pruning, etc. Look for fruit in years 2+ on the brown woody canes. You could always try fertilizing in early spring next year!
Do you sell your plants?
It’s on the list one day! Just have to make sure there’s enough interest to justify the cost of a nursery license.
If you’ve got more questions- comment below!
Bridget
