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Amazingly tasty and fabulously fragrant raspberries do not leave indifferent any gardener. With certain knowledge and skills, growing raspberries will not be difficult even for a novice gardener.
Features of landing
Anyone who has planted shrubs at least once on a plot or in a garden can easily cope with planting a raspberry seedling. The culture prefers slightly acidic or neutral soil. According to the advice of experienced gardeners, shrubs planted in spring or autumn take root best. In summer, green cuttings of the culture can be rooted.
If you are not yet very familiar with the characteristics of the culture, try to choose winter-hardy, productive and unpretentious varieties: thornless, disease-resistant Tarusa raspberries, winter-hardy Cumberland black raspberries.
Lovers of bright colors choose exotic rose-leaved Japanese raspberries, you can plant a dwarf remontant Monomakh’s Hat – a variety with a high yield.
Video “Cultivation of raspberries”
The video tells about the rules for growing raspberries.
Site selection and soil preparation
For landing, you should choose places with good lighting and protected from strong winds. Planting raspberries along the walls of outbuildings or fences on the south side would be ideal. It is important that the snow cover lingers longer in the selected area in winter.
Avoid growing raspberries near annual crops such as potatoes and tomatoes, which are susceptible to the same diseases. But growing raspberries next to an apple tree, on the contrary, has a beneficial effect on both cultures: an apple tree protects the shrub from gray rot, and a raspberry tree protects an apple tree from fungal infections.
Before planting a raspberry seedling, keep in mind that it will grow in the chosen place for about 10-15 years. Culture loves fertile, light soils. If the soil in your garden is sandy or peaty, consider adding compost every year. And in heavy clay soil, the culture grows poorly – its root system quickly rots.
The site chosen for planting should be carefully dug up in advance and well fertilized with organic matter and mineral fertilizers – humus, ammonium nitrate, superphosphates, potassium salt. If the spring planting option is chosen, this is done in the fall, with autumn planting – at least 1 month in advance.
Ways of planting
There are many opinions on how to properly plant and grow raspberries. Experienced gardeners agree that the autumn season is preferable, when the soil is saturated with moisture, the optimum temperature regime for the crop prevails. In addition, bushes rooted during the winter grow more actively in spring. The main thing is to have time to plant raspberries about a month before frost.
Several landing methods are known.
The most common is trench. In this case, it becomes much easier to take care of the bushes after planting. The landing trench is located strictly from north to south – so the illumination of the raspberry will be the most favorable. Its length can be any, but the depth and width are strictly regulated: not smaller than 60 cm, and not narrower than 50 cm. If you are planning more than one row, step back about 1,5 m.
At the bottom of the prepared trench, a drainage layer is poured – sand or gravel, and the soil is mixed with humus and mineral fertilizers. The edges of the trench are reinforced with sides so that they do not crumble, and T-shaped supports are installed at the ends to stretch two rows of wire at a height of about 40 cm from the ground. We plant the bushes in one line, retreating from each other about 1 m. The seedlings are carefully watered, the planting site is mulched. In the future, we will tie the growing plants to the wire.
If you have few bushes, the pit method of planting is more suitable. The soil for raspberries is prepared in the same way as for the previous method. Holes are formed with a size of 40 × 40 cm, a depth of at least 30 cm. The distance to the next seedling must be kept within 1 m.
The root system of the seedling should be cleaned of damaged roots, straighten the roots in the hole and cover with earth, compacting it around the plant. Now you can water the raspberries. Do this in several stages until the earth is completely saturated with moisture.
Follow-up care for raspberries
The need for care for planted raspberry bushes is determined by the chosen method of planting, as well as the varietal affiliation of your crop. So, tree-like varieties, such as Skazka, need the first formative pruning already 2 weeks after planting, while the cut shoots can be used for propagation by cuttings.
Will be grateful for regular pruning and fruitful Tatiana and Patricia. The remontant variety Polka is recommended to be cut “under zero” for the winter, the fruitful Gusar, Polana and Caramelka need frequent and plentiful watering. In general, the recommendations for caring for raspberry bushes are the same.
Watering
Raspberries require increased watering during the active growing season – in spring and summer, when the fruits are formed and ripen. Watering the bushes should be at least 2 times a month, at the rate of 25 liters of water per 1 sq. m landings. The last watering should be done no later than October.
fertilizers
After each watering, the bed with raspberries should be well loosened – this way you will remove the weeds that have appeared and improve the flow of air to the root system of plants. As for dressings, they should be applied 2-3 times during the season. Most often, organic fertilizers are used – bird droppings or mullein.
Garter
Raspberries form long lashes, so they need a garter. Tapestries or stretched wire are used as supports. With bush planting, you can use the fan method of garter: next to the bush we place several supports, and we attach shoots to them as they grow.
Subtleties of reproduction
Most often, raspberries are propagated by root layers, green cuttings, dividing the bush or seeds. In the first case, the gardener chooses the most powerful and healthy shoots, carefully digs them out and plant them as an independent bush. If there are a lot of layering, and it is difficult to separate them from the mother plant, you can use the method of dividing the bush, having previously carried out sanitary pruning.
Cuttings involve pruning young green shoots and their subsequent rooting before planting.
The most time-consuming is the method of growing plants from seeds – they should be collected independently, dried and germinated in indoor pots.
Growing basics
From seed
Growing from seeds at home involves the mandatory stratification of seed – the seeds need to be hardened. To do this, they are wrapped in a damp cloth and placed in the refrigerator for at least 2 weeks. Only after that they can be planted in separate pots. It is best to do this in March, with the onset of heat, seed pots can be placed on a glazed loggia, balcony or veranda. Every 9-10 days, seedlings should be fed with a solution of urea. When shoots appear, they are kept in pots until the onset of heat, and only then transferred to a permanent bed.
In the greenhouse
Growing in a greenhouse allows you to harvest your favorite berries almost all year round if the room is heated, or to stretch the fruiting period as much as possible if there is no heating system. For greenhouse cultivation, a trench planting method is used, the lashes are tied to trellises. Raspberry beds should be watered and fed every 2 weeks.
According to the Sobolev method
Some summer residents practice the Sobolev method – it is believed that this method of planting significantly increases the yield of bushes. The secret lies in the fact that the bed with seedlings should be about 20 cm above the soil level, and trellises are installed along the row of plantings.
The method involves regular thorough pruning of the raspberries, removal of root shoots. We remember that the culture actively reproduces, forming shoots from the root system. If you want to try this method in action, you can plant 1-2 bushes, forming mini-beds in tires.
Despite the variety of varieties and methods of care, it is not difficult to get a good harvest of berries, the main thing is to follow the basic rules of agricultural technology and do everything on time.