First advice on caring for raspberries - trellis
Raspberries must be grown only on a trellis, this has been proven by the experience of millions.
When planting in even rows, when installing posts and wires, your raspberries are capable of producing 6-8 times more berries every year and at the same time you get the highest possible quality of berries.
All your efforts become meaningless if your green factory (raspberry plant) is not able to show its natural advantages and drags on its existence like a wild raspberry.
Raspberry Care Tip # 2 - Update
Raspberries cannot degenerate, it is biologically impossible. But there are many summer cottages where raspberries are neglected thickets, and weakened sick raspberry plants are called degenerating.
There are many examples when gardeners put “degenerating” raspberries in order and again got fruitful bushes with large berries.
It is necessary to re-outline the rows along the twine, in the row to hammer the pegs along the twine after 70 cm, destroy everything unnecessary, the plants left in the right places should receive complete care, and plant the necessary seedlings in the empty places (where there is nothing along the twine).
It is necessary to constantly re-plant new seedlings in each row every 70 cm, and eliminate all excess raspberry plants. It is necessary to increase the growth of the main shoots in the center of the bush and in a year or two, good care will return your planting to the yield and quality of the berries.
Raspberry Care Tip Three - Narrow Rows
Rows of raspberries should be narrow, up to 30 cm wide, and there should be free space between the bushes inside the row.
The reason for the failure is that raspberries are often grown in a wide strip, where the plants you planted grow interspersed with the mass of growth plants that sprout on their own.
The biology of raspberries is such that a lot of growth always grows around the main plant. A raspberry bush is an overgrown seedling we have planted and the growth around it. The shoots are also raspberries, no one plants them, but every year it grows by itself. For the main crop, raspberry growth is a weed, and as with any weed, it must be constantly fought with. It is the shoots that take over 50% of all nutrients extracted and produced by the entire raspberry plant.
In practice, the raspberry shoot is the enemy of the raspberry, which by itself grows annually throughout the life of any raspberry planting. When no shoots are left on the raspberries, then all the main shoots of the raspberry bush are well illuminated by the sun from bottom to top, therefore, the harvest on them is also placed along the entire length of the shoot, and not only at the top of the shoot. The berries are well lit by the sun and blown by the wind, so there are much fewer fungal diseases and insects on them.
You always see all these advantages on your raspberry seedlings in the second year of life, when they still cannot be thickened and give a lot of berries throughout the shoot from bottom to top. You need to accustom yourself to the fact that you cannot have a large harvest if you do not constantly destroy the raspberry shoot. Shoots are destroyed with a sharp shovel, cutting them at a depth of 3-5 cm in the ground.
If usually in a thickened planting of raspberries of the Kirzhach variety, 6-8 berries are formed on each fruit branch, then at the planting, where shoots are regularly removed, 8-14 and even 18 berries are formed on each lateral.
In the absence of overgrowth, the root system works for the enhanced development of bush replacement shoots, the basis of the crop and its quality. The berries are larger, sweeter and better executed. On each fruit branch (lateral), more berries are obtained, and there are also more laterals on the shoot.
If we regularly remove shoots, then from the first to the last harvest, the berries on the Kirzhach variety plantation almost do not shrink, their taste remains typical sweet, and even in rainy weather, there is almost no decay on the berries and they remain in good quality longer.
In addition to common failures, it is useful to remember simple tips. Raspberry itself is such a culture, which has a large fan of leaves above the ground, and the roots are only 10-20 cm in the upper horizon of the soil. That is why frequent drying out of the soil strongly affects the "well-being" of the raspberry plant, and the raspberry shoots that have experienced bad situations for the next year give only 8-10 branches with berries instead of 30-35. It seems that there is no death of the bush, but there is almost no harvest either. And then it is clear that this year's harvest is highly dependent on the living conditions of the escape in the previous year, and therefore the poor care of this year is the foundation of next year's crop failure. This is biology.
Manure advice
The advice is very old and now, when there is almost no manure, it is necessary to try to give all the compost to the raspberries from the garbage heap, from the heap of rotted weeds, from the possible import of peat or any organic matter. Neither the apple tree nor the currant are so oppressed in the absence of organic matter, as it is striking on the raspberry. Under natural conditions, in the absence of organic matter in the field, raspberries do not grow at all, but grow on the edges of the forest with an abundance of rotten leaves and other material. A person seems to know everything, but this is not enough, it is necessary to simply withstand the natural requirements of raspberries and mulch raspberry bushes with some kind of plant material.
Raspberries are spreading over the site
Such is her biology, it may not be necessary to do something against nature. It's not such a big problem every year in May-June to walk twice and cut off all the shoots with a sharp shovel, wherever it occurs. It is not at all necessary to dig out every new growth if you prune it near the ground. If some gardeners dig in slate, metal sheets and say that their raspberries do not creep, they have deprived themselves of a bountiful harvest and will have, at best, only a small part of the possible harvest of their raspberries.
