Bare root berry questions

So for the first time I bought some bare root berries. Raspberry and grapes. All the grapes leafed out as I expected but the stems on the raspberries are dead. A few have shoots coming out from the roots. Is this normal? The plants I bought have a guarantee but I don’t want to wait much longer to replace if they are supposed to leaf out on the stem. I need to replace them asap before it gets hot.

Bottom line do bare root berries normally leaf out on stems or from the root

Thanks for any help

Your going to be just fine with new growth appearing at ground level.

Hi Joe,
I second Robert's comment. You should be fine if they are coming up at ground level. Most of the time, yes, they will leaf out on the stem. But if it was improperly handled or got a little too dry... it might kill the stem, but not the roots. Not too big of a deal on something like raspberries.

I'll ditto the above replies and say they'll be fine, the roots are alive and spreading underground is what raspberries do.

Joe Hallmark wrote:
Bottom line do bare root berries normally leaf out on stems or from the root

So it depends. Most brambles (raspberries, blackberries as examples) grow a primocane which is just growth, and that becomes a floricane the following year which blossoms and sets fruit, then dies. This is the two year cycle for most brambles, but there are some varieties that will have blossom and fruit set on first year growth. While floricanes are blossoming, new primocanes are emerging from the soil surface and growing for the next year. It doesn't really surprise me as you may have been shipped live roots with a floricane attached that is now dead, and all in good order. It helps brambles to remove the dead floricanes in autumn or winter by cutting them at the ground.

Ok that makes sense. I’ll keep an eye on the two that haven’t leafed at all around the root area. The canes are definitely dead on those two because they very easily broke off earlier.

Thank you all for the replies.

When planting bare-root bramble berry canes it is standard practice to cut all the existing canes back to the ground at planting.  This allows the plant to focus entirely on establishing a good root system and new canes.  Allowing the canes to bloom and fruit on newly planted bare-root berries wastes the plant's energy and gives a meager crop of sub-standard fruit anyway.  Blackberries will fruit in 1 year from roots, raspberries typically in 6 months.

I'll just say that raspberries can sometimes fruit on first year wood (autumn fruiting). The normal raspberries fruit on last years' growth. I have some 'autumn fruiting' but here they try and ripen in November and taste like shit. If I leave the canes though I get fruit on the previous years' canes quite early in the summer and this works for me. Normally you would prune out to the ground in winter all the canes for 'primocane' raspberries, and just the older canes that fruited that year for second year fruiting bushes. You can easily tell from the colour and remains of the fruit which are which. I love raspberries :)