How to Grow Raspberries
Raspberries belong to the large Rubus family and they are among the earliest foods consumed by humans. The red raspberry was thought to have originated in Greece while the wild raspberry originated in North America.
Planting
Raspberry plants are very forgiving of soil types but thrive in a well drained humus rich soil with a PH between 6.0 and 6.5. They will produce heavily in a spot that gets at least 6 hours of sun. You will also make picking the fruit a ton easier if you can set up some kind of training system or trellis system to tie the long flexible canes onto. For this reason, planting against a fence and adding wires or adding some wire and posts to the raspberry bed will help to keep your plants organized enough to make picking a breeze!! Make sure you thin your plants regularly or the raspberry bed will get overgrown. You can share thinnings with friends and family too. Adding compost or well rotted manure to the raspberry bed each year will help keep them growing like gangbusters!! If you would like to grow multiple varieties, make sure you keep each one separated or as they all grow together you will not be able to tell which is which when you need to prune or thin!!
Container
Container planting of the taller varieties can be accomplished with a large enough container and a creative trellising system. Even better there are newer dwarf varieties available that work great in medium to large planters and produce over a long period of time!! When planting in containers, it is especially helpful if you can topdress with compost or well aged manure each year.
Pollination
Raspberry plants are self fruitful, so one variety is all you need. They are an excellent pollen source for many different species of bees and wasps and are actually a hub of activity during bloom time!! And yes, wasps are also very important pollinators!
Pruning
The most important thing to learn about your raspberries is which type they are. You can determine whether they are summer fruiting or autumn fruiting in order to figure out how to prune them. THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to know is: even if you completely prune they wrong, you wont kill them and you will STILL get fruit. You will get even more fruit if you prune according to type.
Summer Fruiting:
-These varieties fruit on floricanes.
- Prune back to the ground canes that have fruited that season once dormant.
- Shorten the previous seasons primocanes to about chin height and tie.
Autumn Fruiting:
-This variety fruits on Primocanes.
- Cut everything back to the ground once dormant.
- If you want to encourage side branching pinch back tips once they reach a metre in height in spring.
Thinning is also helpful, when your raspberry beds get so filled in they begin to shade out the younger canes it is time to thin. You can prune out the excess canes to the base any time and you can dig out some to share for friends and family in the spring.