Where to plant raspberries and grapes

I have 3 empty plots (each approximately 25' X 20') to build beds located on separate areas of my property.  I want to grow raspberries and grapes.  I've read about diversifying and combining plants so I am wondering if I should not plant all of my raspberries together in one area and the same for my grapes.   

Would you guys recommend I plant a row or two of raspberries in each plot?  How about the grapes?  I am not sure if the grapes should be planted right next to the row of raspberries.  I do not have a fence for growing the grapes so will grow them on a horizontal wire that's on posts. 

Thanks for any help.
Beth
Idaho Zone 6

i have several areas through out my property with grapes and raspberries..but they can be grown together..

I have a metal arbor in the front yard that has grapevines that are over 100 years old over top of them, they are seedy purple grapes good for juice or wine or jelly.

However i prefer seedless grapes for table grapes..so i have been planting them on small arbors all over the place..i have 3 good solid arbors in my back yard..each has grapes on either side of it..that will go over the top and shade the area under it..my grape vines also have climbing roses and clematis planted with them, for diversity.

I have my raspberries in two areas (cultivated) and wild ones in the woodsy groves. I have a section of black raspberries under the east side eaves of the north end of my garage, and they grow well there and provide berries from June thru frost..but I also have planted a hedge along the west side of my food forest garden of brambles that include black, gold and red raspberries and blackberries..in a long row along a fenceline so they can be trained as a hedge..

that hedge is now underplanted with some winter squash, and at the posts there are some hollyhocks, there are also 2 baby chestnut trees and a large fruited hawthorn and a buffaloberry in that hedge..

berries do make wonderful fruiting hedgees (fedges)..

In our area, raspberries seem to do the best in sites that are woodland edge, specifically those with trees to the west of the patch.  They seem to benefit from afternoon shade when the summer heat and sun are most intense.  Berries with afternoon shading are the largest and sweetest.  Just the opposite conditions for grapes which like all the sun they can get.  We are in the upper Midwest though, and our summer heat and humidity are only offset by our extreme winter cold so what works here might not be true for you.  If you can find healthy wild specimens, check out their microclimate and soil preferences and try to mimic that.

Larisa

Larisa I find exactly the same thing here..my best raspberries are in the shade of western buildings or fences..and some grow in the west side of our woods near a clearing in two woods areas..wild.

as for the grapes ..most of ours are in full sun..but some have only morning and evening sun with shade at midday and they are loaded with grapes..but those are really really old grapevines..were here before the original house was built in 1900..so they are well over 100 years old, not sure of variety but likley concord as they are purple with seeds.

but another thing people forget about grapes..in the wild..they grow UP trees..so they are partially in shade when they perch themselves in trees, and they always do really well ..

so i wouldn't be overly concerned about shade unless you are planting a large commercial vineyard

My little baby grapes have done better in with, and under, other plants.  My best one is growing in the afternoon shade west of my home.  In fact the ones I bring in the house survive when dying outside.  They seem to like being house plants.

raspberries do best if they are planted in a row between posts with wire on the posts, you put the raspberries so that they grow up between the wires, that way they don't fall down and put little rooted plants in your other parts of youir garden, which can get really congested and make it difficult to harvest or care for them..a hedgerow of berry bearing plants is how i have mine..along the side of my food forest garden.

i have a picket fence rather than the wires, but i weave the berry tops into the pickets..you have to cut out the old non bearing canes every year to keep the plants healthy, so make sure that after they are through bearing you remove all used up canes immediately.

you can plant some plants below your raspberries, but they are difficult to harvest, so i just mulch mine really well, although this year i tried planting some squash vines along the raspberry patch as an experiment it wasn't really successful.

if you want more plants, after they are growing well, you can lay down a plant along your row and it will send up new plants in most cases the following spring..at each node.

as for grapes, i prefer to grow them over an arbor, but if you are growing a whole lot of grapes you might want to set up a pole system for them as well like the raspberries, but don't combine them together.

i have several arbors with grapes on them, i do grow other things on the arbors as well, as grapes are so easy to harvet..i have climbing roses, honeysuckle vines and even grow some pumpkins, squash and cukes and clematis up over my grape arbors...and ov course yuou can plant things around the bases of the arbors as well, i prefer to add in a few flowers to bring in beneficial insects.

All this rain is a good time to maybe plant some of my stuff out of pots and into the ground.  What do you think about asparagus and grapes together?  What about berries and asparagus?

I have both thornless and regular berries as well as wild ones (staying) out back. 

Asparagus is tall in pots, grapes and berries not as big, also in pots.  I have one nice long cane full of perfect baby-plants-to-be, in thornless. 

Would the thorned kind be good to grow where little dog goes thru field wire fence (4 inch squares)? 

Also my amaranth is doing great and is so pretty, I plan to plant all in front of the barn next year where the lambs quarters are doing so well now.  Amaranth and grapes I think might be good too.

Raspberries are a woodland plant, so they love thick leaf mulch and they hate digging and hoeing. I plant lettuce, garlic, onions and lily of the valley between raspberries. Never thought of asparagus though, doesn't asparagus need lot of hoeing and digging?

Thank you for you input.  I don't dig or hoe mine, just deep mulch of wood chips and horse manure... my recipe for everything.  I change the ratio around but mostly have LOTS of manure to use. 

I also of course have paper, weeds and hay.  I have  a half a bag of crushed oyster shell, a calcium suppliment for chickens, and a half a bale of peat to use up. 

I hate to place plants out and commit their fate to my choice of home. 

one note on rasberries; garlic makes a great companion plant for them.

Thank you Eric,
that is just the kind of information I look for.  I have some old garlic cloves and will plant them with my berries. 

i was thinking black berries and raspberries over the leechfield  cant plant fruit trees there so maybe bramble

Some great information here. I'm new to permaculture and gardening in general, and am planning our forest garden and annual guilds this winter.

Some basic background on the site:

We are in zone 7a officially, but probably 7b now. We have ultilsol soils that characterize the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

Have a couple of questions to continue this thread:

1. Mixing crops with raspberries

It was said up thread that garlic grows well with raspberries. From what I've read, garlic doesn't do "well" with competition. Raspberries are wicked good at crowding out other species. So I wouldn't think that the two would go well together. [edit] I would like to know more about your experiences planting garlic with raspberries. We all know that what you read isn't always true, so I want to hear about what you've done! [edit]

I was planning on planting white clover for nitrogen as a cover crop for my berries; all the while adding compost + chopped & dropped clippings from the dynamic accumulators. Does that sound reasonable?

2. Moving raspberries and blackberries

When we bought the plants around June of 2010 I only had a general idea as to what to do with them. But since reading both volumes of David Jacke and Eric Toensmeier's Edible Forest Gardens while in Europe, I came back to our home with some better knowledge and have performed some triage, including expanding their holes. Sure enough, they hadn't grown well because the holes were too narrow and the surrounding soil too compact. I now know that not only are the placed entirely too close together, but that we will need to keep them to their own with rhizome barriers so they don't expand through our property.

We have to move our two raspberry and one blackberry this coming spring. One of the raspberries, lets say R1 was doing well this summer. We didn't know we were supposed to cut down the canes that produced, so I left them growing after I returned from 3 months in Europe. This was in order to allow the plants to ready themselves for winter. Should I wait until R1 buds out this spring before dividing and moving?

All the berries, besides our blues, had a fungal disease upon my return. So did our laurel oak, willows, river birches, and maple trees. R2 was entirely too beset with the fungus so I cut the canes to the ground. After this pruning in October, the plant sent out amazing new growth to the edges of the expanded hole. This new growth never once showed signs of attack by the fungus. I have a better feeling about dividing this plant, but when should I do it?

Our sole blackberry, B1 was also attacked by the fungus. We did not cut the canes of this plant for the same reasons as the raspberry. I have left the canes standing even now in the winter on both it and R1. I was hoping to allow them all the time possible to collect sunlight. Should I go ahead and cut them?

Lastly, we are thinking of growing grapes here as well. We live about 30 miles east of the Yadkin Valley wine producing region. I went to a county extension "class" on growing grapes and was told that for maximum production, one should limit the vine's growth to ~6ft long. I'm willing to bet that in a perennial forest garden system, people let theirs grow longer.

How do you manage your vines? Do you care about the length? Do you follow other guidelines such as choosing one vine to become the trunk for support?

Thanks!

PS- Eventually I'll get around to posting our plans. I'm almost done compiling our seed list for next year, so once that's complete I'll be around asking lots of questions and posting feedback! Thanks!

I grow my raspberries in east-west rows and it is true that garlic doesn't compete well, so I plant them on the south side of the raspberry rows. My rows are half a meter wide. From literature I have read garlic shouldn't grow there at all but they do just okay in my case. They are not so much for eating but for the raspberries anyway. I have an extra garlic row on a fine sunny spot in my garden.

Dunkelheit,

Do the garlic plants offer the same "aromatic pest confusing" benefits as onions are said to do? What other functions do the garlic plants appear to be fulfilling?

I'd like to try it and any info you can give will let me know what I should be looking for.

Thanks!

Comparing garlic to onions is like comparing garlic to tulips. I don't know about aromatic pest confusing benefits of onions except when they are planted with carrots.
Garlic is different. Garlic has only one enemy I know of: Acrolepiopsis assectella and they are preyed upon by Ichneumonidae. So it is good to have some artifical habitats for Ichneumonidae-species around. A pot on a stick with some straw in it will serve them as a habitat. I love to encourage predators in my garden. It's fun!

Just give garlic a try. It is not like it is very expensive or something. I also have lily of the valley growing under my raspberries. They are known to have healing properties. I don't fully understand that stuff and it always sounds esoteric to me but I never had problems with grey mold or any other disease on my raspberries.

We will give it a go for sure. I've got a few little experiments with garlic going on right now, not much to write home about, but I really want to let a few naturalize, or acclimate to our soil and climate. This sounds like a great way to do so.

We're so new that we want to try just about anything someone has good experiences with.

The best blackberry (dewberries) patch in the area that I know of is along a river, sandy/gravely shore, south facing.  It probably gets sun all day long and the berries... ohhh the berries.  Biggest blackberries I've ever seen.  Some of them almost ping pong ball sized!

i tried something new with my raspberries this fall i bent down and buried the old canes, i'm hoping they root and send up new shoots in the spring giving me a larger more dense planting, i have a tiny yard. spring is on it's way, i'll let you know how it works out