~ WORLDWIDE Vegetable Allotments ~ REVIVAL of last years thread ~

[boggybranch]

Hattie,

I read, so many times, about planting raspberry canes. It makes me wonder........Are the canes set out each year or are beds established that lasts for several years.... how many canes, would you say, is normally grown to have enough raspberries to eat fresh and to have enough for jellies and jams, in gardens, there?

Would, really, like to 'mimmick' an allotment fruit bed (in my allotment "style" garden), just seems like it would take a lot of garden space to produce enough fruit to be more than "a mouthful or two" at a gathering.

While fruit beds are alluded to in almost every blog, there's not as much "detail", as there is with the veggies.

 

[lupinfarm]

Boggy, Raspberries and other brambles will send out and expand on their own to my knowledge. I know I had a friend who had 6ft of Raspberry bushes in the garden that produced enough fruit every year for 2 people to eat pretty much daily.


I'm putting in about 20ft of raspberry bushes this year in a raised bed, we're digging down below the weed cloth and mulching them to bits. I'll plant another 20ft on the other side of the bed sometime as well. Its a 5ft wide bed, 20ft long, so I'll have a path down the middle of it with rubber stepping stones. We also have blackberries as a landscape item in the front garden just behind our picket fence.

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi boggy b,

When I first moved into this house it had a raspberry patch which was about20ft by16ft but completely over-run by nettles. It still produced way too much fruit for me & the nettles made it nasty to collect so that autumn I dug another bed (half the original size) in a sunny area. I planted the best & youngest of the canes from the original bed plus a lot cuttings I had taken in the spring & kept in pots. The new bed is about half the size & is fairly nettle free (nowhere in my back garden is ever totally free of nettles..........!!! ) It grows enough fruit for me to eat a bowl of fruit for breakfast plus making some jam plus some raspberry vodka & vinegar & plus a few treats for my (hopefully) broody hens.

I have to confess my raspberries hardly ever see a bowl or get inside the house as I eat them on the hoof,as I wander round the garden; same as with peas, strawberries & any tiny sweet tomatoes. It's one of the reasons I grow them -- for the pleasure of plucking & gorging.....gardener's perks!!!!

I am thinking of planting some Autumn fruiting canes to extend the season but I can't decide which variety. I would check locally which varieties do well in your area & what yields they are likely to have as they do vary a lot.

Spring is definitely here but very late this year. :happy_flower

Good advice lupinfarm


..:rose Hattie :rose

 

[nipitinthebud]

Hi BoggyB
I've posted some pictures to Flickr of my autumn fruiting raspberry canes as I've no idea otherwise how to recommend the amount of space you might need or number of canes.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67947636@N00/

My raspberry canes take up about 6' x 4' and I would say there are about 10 canes in double rows of 5. I planted them about 4 years ago from root cuttings from another gardener (you should never need to buy canes - ask about and there will always be someone cursing their raspberries for rooting wider than they want them to and subsequently digging them out). These are autumn fruiting canes (don't know what variety) and in the autumn I dug out the summer fruiting ones because by comparison they've produced hardly any fruit.

I have no idea what your climate is like so can only comment on the great British (cough) summer that is mostly rainy with odd days of balmy sunshine. In my experience the autumn fruiting raspberries start producing fruit about July time which is ideal if you have strawberries fruiting in May/June. The season lasts well into Sept/Oct and because we had an amazing 3 weeks of no rain in September last year I was still picking fruit in October (and November although they were getting tart by then for the lack of sunshine). At the height of the season I was picking a litre of raspberries every 2-3 days and froze lots for use in smoothies.

Photo no 4 was taken after the New Year snowfall had melted in January. It's best to leave the canes over winter as cutting fruit bushes too late in the autumn can make the bush vulnerable to rot. They'll weather the chill of winter and then you cut them right back in February to allow new growth to form. They're really hardy and I must admit to just letting them get on with it year after year!

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Hi nipitinthebud

Great advice, I shall order some autumn-fruiting ones today -- there are some good offers on at the moment. As we often get a warm & sunny Indian Summer once the children go back to school it would be great still to be picking raspberries.

It is great to have you giving tips on the forum & seeing the photos! I see you have the wonderful Anthony Gormley sculptures on there as well. I hope everyone takes a peek at them as well. They look so wonderful on that huge beach! I am a great fan of his work!

:rose Hattie :rose

PS. Edited to add that I enjoyed Part3 of Ministry of Food on your Website.....

 

[boggybranch]

Everybody,

Thanks for the info. Didn't know that there was a summer and an autumn bearing variety. Our climate is pretty darn hot during the summer and winters are, traditionally, more like early spring with a spattering of just enough freezing weather to throw a "monkey wrench into the works" for year-round gardening for the unprepared.
Sure sounds like I would be able to get enough fruit from planting just one of the beds.
Great pics, nipit......gave me a visual of what an established bed actually looks like. Raspberries are much more erect than our rambling wild blackberries.
Gonna have to check around for starting stock and what varieties are available and are good for my "zone".

 

[Hattie the Hen]

HAPPY SUNDAY everyone...! SPRING IS HERE....! :happy_flower

I have just come across a few interesting videos made by Alice Walters, of Chez Panisse fame, demonstrating the good that can be done in educating the youngsters by setting up a community food garden in a school.
They are on the Epicurious Website which is one of my favourite places to spend time on looking for recipes & food information.

http://www.epicurious.com/video/chef-profiles/chef-profiles-alice-waters/1915458812


Have a good look....... ........it's good news...!!



:rose Hattie :rose

 

[Ladyhawke1]

Last year a friend gave me some blackberry canes in a pot. It was the first thing I put in my garden. I am deathly afraid trimming it. I even have a book that tells how to do it however, it is a bit confusing. I set it against a wall and I need to get it a trellis.

It is growing like crazy but I have not seen any fruit yet. This variety has thorns; however, my friend does not know the name of the plant. She just called it a blackberry. :/

 

[boggybranch]

HAPPY SUNDAY everyone...! SPRING IS HERE....! :happy_flower

I have just come across a few interesting videos made by Alice Walters, of Chez Panisse fame, demonstrating the good that can be done in educating the youngsters by setting up a community food garden in a school.
They are on the Epicurious Website which is one of my favourite places to spend time on looking for recipes & food information.

http://www.epicurious.com/video/chef-profiles/chef-profiles-alice-waters/1915458812


Have a good look....... ........it's good news...!!



:rose Hattie :rose

This is a "visionary" project, for sure. There is no telling how many of these kids (after going through the speed of early life) will, one day, be drawn back to the soil....all because of this very project.

You can always clean the dirt out from under your fingernails after a day in the garden...but, you never forget how good it felt to get the dirt under them.

 

[boggybranch]

Last year a friend gave me some blackberry canes in a pot. It was the first thing I put in my garden. I am deathly afraid trimming it. I even have a book that tells how to do it however, it is a bit confusing. I set it against a wall and I need to get it a trellis.

It is growing like crazy but I have not seen any fruit yet. This variety has thorns; however, my friend does not know the name of the plant. She just called it a blackberry. :/

In 2005, I had a nice size blackberry bed (volunteered, not planted) on my place. Got MANY gallons of berries from the patch....and MANY scratches and thorns in the fingers, too. The patch, kinda, "petered out" after a couple of years, tho. I never pruned, thinned or fertilized it and it seemed to me that it just "choked" itself out...it go sooooo thick with growth.