Advice on planting raspberries please

Hello everyone and thanks in advance.

This year I am wanting to plant red raspberries.  I have tried before but without much success.  Part of my problem might be my soil.  I have thick, heavy brown clay and very hot summers with mild winters.

The spot appears about perfect—it is nice and sunny and easy to get to.  Naturally, I plan on covering the row with woodchips and inoculating with Wine Caps.  

I the past when I grew them they just did not seem to thrive and I never got any reasonable amount of berries from them.  I eventually gave up and the raspberries just seemed to die off.

I would love any suggestions from more experienced berry growers out there who could either critique what I did wrong before or give me suggestions on what I can do better.  For the record, wild blackberries grow around here with wild abandon.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

Eric,
Raspberries love it here with me. I have cool wet summers and mild wet winters, with shallow, silty soil.
I suspect if your summers are hot, then the raspberries may prefer to grow in some shade with you. Save the sunshine for more demanding crops! They like a cool root run. They are shallow rooting so need a fair amount of moisture through the fruiting season, so a good organic mulch is great. Mine grow happily with stinging nettles, which is a pain (!) when picking. Probably mint would be a similar, but less annoying companion.

My experience is that they do best with plenty of soil moisture.

Our soil is poor at holding moisture. Our raspberries are always a bit underwhelming, despite mulching extensively etc...

My MIL has raspberries at here place in Wales. Their garden is about 12" above the ground water level year round. The canes have perpetual access to water. Without mulching her plants are more lush, vigorous and healthy, and produce bigger fruit yields.

Good morning Eric! I’m happy to tell you of my failures because we seem to have a lot in common. Your heavy clay is brown, mine is red and neither drain well. I believe that is the main issue here. I also have lots of wild blackberries.
I have had success with raspberries though. There are some very steep hills here where erosion is an issue. Due to severe factors I can’t do anything with them so I decided to plant local muscadines near the top. They did really great there! The area is wet, and has good protection due to the woods close by. Even though it’s always wet the top twenty four inches drain well. Two years ago I interplanted raspberry canes with the muscadines. I happily report that my production is fantastic!
My only other suggestion is a hugelkultur with canes planted around the edges. Annuals on top with perennials around the sides has worked well for me.

I find that raspberries are picky about moisture. They don't like such get but they hate being dry. My dad has his on a timed drip irrigation in loose loamy soil and they are giants and so sweet. I have raspberries in six inch tall raised beds because I put them in two different areas- one area is a swamp in winter and the other area is on top of a former gravel RV parking pad. My raspberries are happiest on top of the gravel and have struggled in the swampy area. My hypothesis is that they like how well it drains over the gravel. I water deeply once or twice a week during the hottest part of the summer but I suspect mine would grow larger if I did daily drip irrigation like my dad.

I've had red raspberries for years here in WV, probably similar climate to southern IL, and my soil is clay based, but improved. I got them from a neighbor, unfortunately don't know the name but it's an old  variety he had going for several decades. Red and less pointy than the ones in the photo above. They are everbearing, so they bear a small crop halfway up the old canes in late June if you don't cut them to six inches in fall; then they bear at the tips of the young canes starting in August (I've picked a couple times already this year) and continuing until it frosts--even if that's not till November. They are reliable and heavy producers. Why yours have not done well I don't know--possibly it's the variety, possibly you need to improve the soil more. I try to add extra compost or manure or leafmold or whatever prior to planting a crop that will be in the same place for several years but didn't give this crop special attention. I've now moved them twice, as they go down in vigor after maybe six years and I decided to get them out of my main garden, which has raised beds, and into my one flat garden space where they and blackberries have one end and can mind their own business there and the raspberries don't poke me when I'm working on something else. I mulch heavily with whole leaves in the fall. If improving your soil doesn't work, you might try hugelkultur--I had better luck with blueberries when I made them a hukelkultur bed. Note that raspberries want a moderately acid soil, 5.5 to 6.5 pH. Testing the soil for pH and possible nutrient deficiencies would probably be a good idea. Clay soil tends to be rich--mine has plenty of everything except sulfur, the addition of which lowers pH. I don't think they want shade.

I’m in upstate South Carolina with heavy red clay, hot, humid summers and mild winters.  Blackberries grew fine here , but the first couple of times that I tried raspberries, they didn’t thrive and died off.  Once I added organic matter and built up the fertility of the soil over a period of several years, now the raspberries are thriving to the point of invasiveness.

I agree with the others that it may be a water issue.  It's heavy clay and similar weather here, too. My raised bed of red raspberries thrives, though, and sends runners out into the clay. It does best with regular watering. The berries are less than half-sized when the bed is thirsty. A year ago I put ramial chipped branches on it for mulch, and I think they boosted the plants.

Raspberries love a light soil, so yes, a heavy clay will make it harder. On heavy clay, the first thing I would do is create a raised bed. I see that the post is a year old, so you may have them in the ground already. No problem: They will grow "up" into the bed as you add a lot of mulch every year.
Here, once the raspberries are done, you will remove all the fruiting canes and select the best ones for the following year [they fruit on 2 yr old canes, so keeping them a 3rd year will only frustrate your efforts].
Here, when our deciduous trees shed their leaves, the city wants them collected and bagged, placed on the curb of the County crew to collect them. I try to get there first and I ask residents if I could have their bags of leaves. I offer to replace the bags one for one. They love it!.
Last year, I got almost 100 - 55 gallon bags which I spread on the asparagus, the raspberries, the elderberries. So it is nearly free.
When I started the practice, my soil was just sand, with less than an inch of... whatever on top. Now, I have almost a foot of beautiful black dirt.
I love maples, but it is OK to pick up pine needles as well [they do not acidify the soil all that much].
Oh, If you grow purple raspberries, clip the canes to about eyeball high or even a bit lower, and don't try to keep every cane: If they are thinner than a pencil, clip them at the base: It will make it easier for the fruiting canes to get sunshine and easier for you to pick them without getting too scratched.
This next year, I plan to innovate a kind of rack to prevent the canes, when they are heavy with fruit from falling in between the new canes for the following year. I think crisscrossing the patch about hip high with twine will help me keep the fruit up high. Right now, I have them fenced in cattle panel to keep the canes from falling over, but they need more support than that.
I used to have a cultivar called Boyne raspberries, and they did well in the clay. Selection of the right cultivar is important. My therapist has a cultivar that just does not "hold" the berry, so she has to pick every day during the season, and they are barely ripe!
Good luck to you!

Mike Turner wrote:I’m in upstate South Carolina with heavy red clay, hot, humid summers and mild winters.  Blackberries grew fine here , but the first couple of times that I tried raspberries, they didn’t thrive and died off.  Once I added organic matter and built up the fertility of the soil over a period of several years, now the raspberries are thriving to the point of invasiveness.

Mike, very glad to hear of your success.  I also garden in the upstate, and have had little success over the years establishing raspberries.  Please keep us updated on your progress! : )

Mary Cook wrote:...They are everbearing, so they bear a small crop halfway up the old canes in late June if you don't cut them to six inches in fall; then they bear at the tips of the young canes starting in August (I've picked a couple times already this year) and continuing until it frosts--even if that's not till November. They are reliable and heavy producers.

I used to have a gardening neighbor who grew everbearing raspberries, but used the alternate culture that you alluded to.  He mowed his plot to the ground every winter, sacrificing the summer flurocane (sp?) harvest and focusing on the later primocane harvest.  His raspberry canes were only ever first year new growth, and he topped them once they reached 3-4' tall in order to keep them manageable and encourage side shoots.  The result may have been a reduced harvest - though there were still plenty of berries to go around - but also a neat, tidy field of self-supporting vertical canes, with no sprawling old growth and no need for trellis wires or supports of any kind.  I thought that definitely looked like the way to go with raspberries, and all of my own efforts since have been in attempt to replicate his results using his technique.

First off, I want to mention that there are different kinds of raspberries; some bear only in summer, some only in fall, and the everbearing at both seasons tho the summer harvest is lighter. About supports: I've collected branches to construct supports and then never used it; I suspect there is a season when they get lax and lie on the ground, as seems to be true of thornless blackberries, then the next year they're upright. Or maybe it's a matter of weather or something. But I've had raspberries for about 13 years and never have used supports. Mostly they stand upright. I don't really prune them, I just remove the old dead canes and dig out the starts that block my aisles (and give them away). Also I'll mention that there are often bees cruising through the patch while I'm harvesting. They're pollinating the flowers and also eating the berries, especially if it's dry. Except for once when I put my hand on one sitting on a fence, I haven't been stung. It seems to work out for us both to get what we want from the patch.

I am currently on my second set of red raspberries. I have mine in containers with BM soil, if you are familiar with the BM products. I mix my soil about 40% compost and 60% BM soil. I use a moisture meter but I'm slowly loosing the fight again. By the moister meter I maintain but... That meter is over the board and my raspberries may need more, or less. I check every container in my greenhouse and water where needed every morning. This is the first year for my greenhouse and since it was ready for the plastic in late May, I opted to omit the plastic over the summer and put shade screen on the greenhouse instead. This is central Texas and we have had 100+ for 3 weeks with 106 for this coming weekend. No rain for over a months and none in store. I fertilize sparingly but don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have the same problem with my tomatoes and marigolds. My peppers , corn, basil, okra and bush beans are all doing fine. Everything has the same soil and same watering method. Any comments or thoughts are appreciated.

Well, Wayne, with the killing heat you've had, you may not be doing anything wrong. I was just wondering though: Is there a reason you don't plant them in the ground? a raspberry will want to wander 4-5 even 6 feet from its mother. In a container, they may just be cramped.
The homer pails may also cook the roots when it is this hot as they are getting this infernal heat from the top *and* the sides. Those pots may be too short to add enough mulch to keep the roots cool.
but like I say, I would be really challenged to do better when the heat is so ... infernal, literally.
If you can still transplant them, try planting them a little deeper and put some very wet straw as mulch. Give them a little shade and keep watering them.
Seeing them looking so miserable, though, I don't hold much hope for them.

I will try that in my High Fence garden. I may have room in there as the rabbits are creating havoc. It is high fenced because the deer eat everything.

I think Cecile is right. That kind of heat, exacerbated by being in a container, is all you need to explain the decline of many of your plants. We're having a fairly cool summer in WV; most of my plants are thriving, but I tried putting one pepper in a container with the idea that I'd be able to bring it onto my attached, unheated greenhouse in fall. It's made some peppers but wilts often; needs unreasonable amounts of water. I concluded it's because the container is too small and the roots are cramped--it's smaller at the base, where the roots would be spreading if they could. I think raspberries don't have copious roots so it's probably not cramping but extreme heat. I also have mint in a container, not to bring it in in winter but to control its rapacity. This year I'm keeping it adequately weeded and watered but it still isn't thriving like it did when I used buried containers (which didn't stop the sneaking roots from escaping, slithering under the mats and sending starts up in all the surrounding flowerbeds, which is why I gave up that approach). I think roots in an aboveground container get uncomfortably hot in summer, cold in winter.

Wayne Petry wrote:I will try that in my High Fence garden. I may have room in there as the rabbits are creating havoc. It is high fenced because the deer eat everything.

Those darn deer! Permies has a number of posts on fencing to prevent deer. The fence does not need to be very high if you can fool the deer [They don't have very good distance perception because their eyes are on each side of their head]. If they have trouble seeing what's on the other side, or if there are raised beds about 2' from the fence on the inside, they may not try to breach.
Rebars, sharp sticks looking up and at different heights, planted haphazardly where they would need to land also give them pause. Human urine or fox urine works against rabbits, but you have to apply every time it rains... Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to bring up a painful topic

Hello, a few days of chilly weather, cat, Marilyn like her namesake the film actress, was back sleeping on my bed, the cat I mean.
Warmth and sun again….
So raspberries, there are about 5 or 6 varieties here. Soil is acid,
lots of sorrel and sweet chestnut,
heavyish clay, great for rmh building etc.
Raspberries rather like it!?!
Black raspberries don’t multiply much
Yellow raspberries repeat fruit. The berries need to be picked hand underneath as the ‘bobbles’ don’t hang together.

Some repeat fruiting plants have migrated with a good size berry to grow as a companion next to and around a walnut tree with wild strawberries and wood mulch. At the moment there a few berries that make it worthwhile to go check them, mmmm.
This, I gather is not supposed to happen. Walnut doesn’t like many companions. Maybe this one was not informed.

One year, my neighbours chickens discovered the delights of raspberries, joining the blackbirds. These French feathered friends learnt many English profanities.

My take away after several years with raspberries is that they are independent minded, grow where they like, move…
They are not watered, get cleaned of old canes every spring, light weeding, loved, old canes and ‘weeds’ are shredded and put back, what is left is cut down to about shoulder or is it waist height. They didn’t like being chopped right down as some neighbours recommended.

Some leaves are picked for herby use.

Voila - enjoy

Blessings, the wood for chopping is calling, muscles, yes.