The Scoop on Raspberries: Site Selection

My raspberry patch

 We grow both summer-bearing and fall-bearing raspberries in our yard because some members in my family love raspberries almost as much as candy and I love having this treat around for them.  While one needs to consider carefully where they are planted, raspberries take little work or money once established, and produce a delicious treat that are expensive if purchased in the store.  Early spring (now) is the preferable time to establish a raspberry bed and it only takes a few canes to produce a bed as big as you allow it to spread!  We made a couple mistakes when we first planted ours, but a talk with the neighbor and a move later, we happily harvest raspberries every year!  I hope that by sharing my experience you will be able to avoid similar mistakes.

But, before I go any further I want to explain the difference between summer-bearing and fall-bearing raspberries.  Summer-bearing are most similar to their wild relatives, producing fruit mid-summer on two year old canes.  Fall-bearing (also known as ever-bearing) raspberries can produce fruit twice a year.  The new canes produce fruit the fall of their first year and then again the following year mid-summer.

I was both ignorant and in denial the first time I planted raspberries.  We initially planted 3 red & 3 yellow ever-bearing plants along the fence between my garden and the neighbors yard.  I knew that raspberries were a spreading plant, but for some reason I assumed that they would NEVER cross a fenced property boundary OR invade my garden... denial!  It didn't even take the full summer before they invaded both my neighbor's yard & especially my watered garden!

As I did a little more reading I found out that raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and some other veggies are susceptible to the same diseases... ignorant!  The last thing I wanted was to have a potential ongoing disease issue in my veggie garden because I had raspberries too close, so we moved them to a new location along the fence (thankfully the above invaded neighbor was happy to harvest from the invaders, so we stayed along the same fence) and added a few canes of summer-bearing raspberries from my mother-in-laws patch.

Yesterday I noticed the first new fall-bearing raspberry shoot as I cleaned out and prepared the bed for this season.  Check out my post on maintaining your raspberries for optimal harvest for more information on raspberry maintenance.

Happy Gardening!