Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
If you plant one raspberry bush, you really won't have to worry about planting anything else ever again. It's the plant that keeps going..and going..and going
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Raspberries are basically biennials. They grow stalks and leaves the first year and then produce fruit on those stalks the second year. And the second year, you should have new growth shooting up, which of course will bear fruit the next year, so they should be self sustaining.......unless they winter kill or something eats the first year stalks, such as deer, which is what I have a problem with.
You also have to clean out the old stalks every spring, those would be the stalks that bore fruit the year before. It is easy to tell which will be the stalks that bear fruit this year and the stalks that bore fruit from the year before. The old stalks that already bore fruit will be much lighter, dry and woody looking. Usually you can break them off if you push on them with a rake but if not, simply get a pair of pruning shears and cut the stalks off at the ground and then dispose of them.
Do not plant raspberries in a bed with your other veggies or fruits, they will sucker out and invade the whole bed. They should be planted somewhere on their own, preferably with some of that black plastic edging stuff that goes quite a ways down in the ground, even then, they will probably sucker underneath that as well.
And raspberries are time consuming to pick, mainly because the stalks have little thorns on them, almost like a rose bush, but finer. Wear a long sleeved cotton shirt or your arms will look like you got in a fight with a cat.
They also need to be well watered if you want to get a good quantity of fruit and a good sized fruit. I usually feed mine with a bit of fish fertilizer early in the growing season and then water it in well. Compost or a bit of well rotted manure is fine too.