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David Handley: I'm David Handley with the
University of Maine Cooperative Extension. We're here to talk about planting raspberries.
I like to plant raspberries in the early spring. As soon as you can start working the soil
up, but any time before the middle of June is usually fine here in Maine. Ideally, usually
mid to end of May is a good time. When you're thinking about selecting the site
for raspberries, you want to pick a site that's nice and open because raspberries like full
sunlight. The soil type should be well‑drained. Raspberries will tolerate a wide range of
soil types as long as they don't have wet feet. Make sure you're not putting them on
a spot where the water's stands during the springtime.
If you do have a heavy soil that doesn't drain very well, one of the things that you can
do is plant your raspberries in a raised bed. It doesn't require much. You just need to
pick the bed up about six to eight inches, and you want your bed to be about two feet
wide. You don't need to do that. Then planting on bare ground is just fine.
It's best to have a soil test done the year before planting. You can pick up a soil test
kit at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Office closest to you. We have a
video on that on this website. Now, there are two types of raspberry plants
you can buy easily. Typically, when we order plants from a nursery, a mail‑ordered nursery,
this is what we're going to get. These are dormant canes often called handles, for short.
We have a segment of a one‑year‑old cane. This was a green shoot that grew up last spring.
The nursery dug it up in the fall, and then stored it, and ships them out in the springtime.
It has a good bit of root on it. We like to see at least 10 inches of root
system on there. These roots are going to spread out, and eventually we'll get buds
from these roots which will spring up, and give us our new shoots that will fill out
the row for us. Also, at some garden centers, you can buy
raspberry plants already growing and potted for you. These are fine also. It's a more
expensive way to go, especially if you're planning on putting in a lot of raspberries.
If you just want a few, and you want them up and growing right away, this can work.
This also allows you to plant later. If you're getting into June or July, it's hard to find
dormant plants then. This may be the way to go.
We want to work the ground up, and we want to incorporate our fertilizer prior to planting.
Based on what your soil test is telling you, you work in your nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium.
If you soil's a little bit heavy, too much clay, and not draining particularly well,
you may want to work in some organic matter like some compost or some peat moss to work
it up. Your soil pH should be at between 5.8 and 6.2.
Your soil test will tell you that. If you're running a little bit acid, you want to work
some lime into the soil to bring that pH up to where the raspberries will like it. Our
spacing on raspberries and when we're getting ready to plant, we want to space them about
two feet between plants, anywhere between 18 and 28 inches is fine. I like to go with
two feet. What we want to do is be able to bury this
deep enough, so that the soil comes to about where they were in the nursery, or a little
bit deeper. This isn't going to require a very deep hole.
Raspberries are very shallow rooted. Most of the roots are on the top, six to eight
inches on the soil. We want to dig the hole wide enough that we can put these roots in
without binding them up or forcing them to bend upwards.
You can see here, we got a nice hole all set ready to go here. Not that deep, we want to
spread the roots out, and work our soil back in. No fertilizer in the planting hole. If
we put fertilizer in the planting hole, we're likely to burn those roots.
This is why I say incorporate the fertilizer prior to planting and digging your holes.
Then we back fill with our soil up, and bring that soil around, up to where it was at the
nursery or slightly deeper. It's always good if you leave a slight depression,
not a hole. Just a slight depression around the plant, such that when it rains, that water
will collect there and not run off away from the plants, but collect there and drain down
and keep those roots nice and moist as we enter the growing season.
Now, your next plant should, as I said, be about two feet away. This looks awfully far
apart, but one of the things that you want to remember is that the buds from these roots
are going to spring forth with new growth, and fill out the space between these plants.
If you have a really long root system that's making it difficult for you, don't be afraid
to prune a little bit of the root off. That's not going to hurt the plant any.
If it makes planting easier, you can trim a little bit of that root off. Make sure you're
not pruning more than 25 percent of the length of the root off because then you're probably
going to be hurting the plant. When it comes to using a potted plant, it's
pretty much the same thing. We need to dig the hole deep and wide enough to accommodate
the pot. We gently tap that raspberry out of the pot, and take a look at the root system.
Here, this looks great. The roots aren't terribly pot bound.
If you have a lot of roots that are winding around the plant like this, those can actually
choke off the plant because they won't grow outwards. They tend to keep growing inwards.
If you see that, don't be afraid to get your hand in there and loosen up those roots a
bit, so that will force them to grow out a little bit.
Don't try to break the roots, but try to loosen them up a bit so that they're not growing
around the pot and choking the plant. Then again, like we did with the other plants,
we want to plant this a little bit deeper than the top of the pot was, and push it down
to make sure you're getting good contact of the soil with those roots.
Whatever you do, don't leave the top of that root ball sitting out of the soil because
that's actually like a wick. If that root ball is sticking out from the soil, the air
will dry it out very quickly, and the plant will go droughty.
The other thing that will happen is these plants will frost heave when that happens,
and you'll find the plant pushed out of the soil the following spring after it's been
exposed to frozen soil over the winter. Again, leave a little depression around it, so that
water collects there, not a deep hole, just a slight depression.
That plant is ready to go. If you want more than one row of raspberries, you need to put
in a second row. One of the most common mistakes people make is to plant that second row too
close to the first row. You need a minimum of eight feet between your rows. As you see
here, this is actually about 10 feet between the rows.
The reason for that is the new canes are going to grow up. They're going to get quite tall.
They may be over six feet tall. When they get laden with fruit, they branch and lean
out. It becomes very difficult to get down between
these rows once the fruit is there, and you have to get in to harvest. Remember, most
of these things have thorns, so it's not fun to try to wade your way through them.
Also, by having this much space between the rows, we allow for plenty of light to come
down and keep the plants dry, and we allow for plenty of air movement between the plants,
also to keep them dry. This will prevent cane diseases from occurring. Give them the space
that they need. If you plant them too tight, you'll regret it later.
Once these plants start growing this summer, we're going to have new shoots coming up from
the base, and also new shoots coming up from in between the plants to fill out this plant
row. We don't want to allow those new shoots to come out any wider than the foot on either
side, so that your total row width at the base is going to be about two feet.
The row width gets wider than that, the plants in the middle are getting shaded out. That's
why you have cane diseases and fruit rots developing. If you have new shoots developing
out here, cut them off. We don't need them. They're causing trouble.
Once the plants are in the ground, we want to put a little water in there to set those
roots nice for us. Also, if you're using the live growing plants, we need to make sure
that these get a good drink to get established because if the soil's dry, it will dry those
roots right out. Again, notice that we put that little depression
around there, so it's collecting water. We want to pour enough on, so that it's going
to get down to that root system where we need it.
We're going to do this to each plant we can, or you can set up a soaker hose or a sprinkler
taking them about an inch to two inches of water right after planting. Again with the
potted plant, we want to make sure there's enough water getting in there that we can
soak that root system nicely. If these plants start to wilt, you know you
need to put more water on there. After you've watered, go back and double check, and make
sure you planted that plant deep enough that the top of the pot, or where the pot was isn't
showing where that plant went in. Once we've got the plants in the ground, and
we've watered them all in, now we can put a mulch on top of them. This mulch will help
keep the soil moist, and it will help prevent weeds from growing. Any type of material that
would typically be used for mulching a perennial crop would do just fine.
Bark mulch, for example, is good. It tends to be a little bit expensive. Woodchips or
shavings also work pretty well. Sawdust tends to be too fine a particle, so when we have
sawdust overtime, it tends to compress and compact. It becomes very difficult for water
to percolate down through it. That's why I prefer shavings or woodchips
to make sure that it's porous enough that the water can come right through there. You
can check that by after putting three or four inches of mulch over the top of this. Pour
a little water over them, and stand there and watch to make sure that the water percolates
down nicely. Press it down a little bit, so it won't blow
away, and you're good to go. If you got a whole bunch of pine needles you want to use,
those make fine mulch too. We don't use them commercially because it's hard to get enough
of them. They'll work fine. People worry that they acidify the soil, but
they don't acidify it very fast. You can always make up for that by putting a little lime
over the top when you're soil test tells you to do that.
That's pretty much it. The other important thing we need to do is to set up a trellis
because when these plants started to grow, they're going to need support next year when
they started to fruit. You can see a good example of a trellis in
our pruning video. That will give you some hints as to how best to support these canes
once they start growing. It doesn't have to be done right away. You can wait to the late
summer fall, or even next spring to set up that trellis.
This is how to plant them. Bear in mind that at some point, they're going to need some
support. The other important thing to remember when you're citing your raspberries is try
not to plant them where there are a lot of wild raspberries around, because wild raspberries
have a lot of diseases. Those can spread on to your new, healthy raspberries.
If you've got a lot of wild ones around, it's best to prune them out or cut them out prior
to planting your raspberries. That's it. Go plant some raspberries.
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Transcription by CastingWords