Wild Raspberries Questions

[drewskimac]

Hello all, I have some questions about wild raspberries!

My grandma lives in the mountains where there used to be a raspberry farm... until a tornado hit it. 10 years later, these raspberries have turned wild and are ALL OVER THE PLACE.The past 3 years I have been collecting young plants in the fall and transplanting them to the hillside behind my house. This has worked wonderful for me - i am getting pints upon pints of delicious raspberries just from a few plants that I pulled out of the woods. However, I am wondering how to care for my plants right now...

Should I trim them all down to a few inches above the ground? Should they be tied to some sort of trellising? What would be a good method of weed control? Could I take old empty PAPER chicken feed bags and lay them down in the rows?

Thankyou all! Any care tips to increase my crops are much appreciated!

 

[Bridebeliever]

I live near a HUGE Raspberry producing area...1,000's of acres of berries! I see how they manage them every year but I don't grow them myself.

One thing they do is prune them back EVERY year and tie them up to basically a trellis...It's a long sturdy wire that runs the length of the row that the berry canes are gathered up and then tied to.

Pruning
Raspberries produce berries on two year old canes while one year old canes grow right beside them. You shouldn’t have trouble telling which is which: the older canes have brown stems, and the young ones are still green. Prune only the older ones, the ones that have finished their fruitful year.

• Prune in the fall. Leave about 6 of the thickest, strongest green canes.
• Keep plant contained to a 19-inch wide space. Left alone without care all summer, neat rows will become thickets.
• Cut off all canes that grow sideways.

Also, raspberries LOVE moisture (which is why our area is perfect). They also need the bases mulched. It looks like they pile up sawdust or pine shavings around the bases here...but I haven't seen it up close. Heavy mulching will keep your weeds down.

 

[drewskimac]

Thanks so much for your info! Mine are wild, and i've noticed that even the biggest, oldest canes produce the most fruit each year! However, I have tried doing what you said about pruning and trellising so I will continue to do so!

 

[Bridebeliever]

Your welcome! You're lucky to have access to all those yummy (and expensive) berries!

 

[ShrekDawg]

We have wild berries here too and they have taken over too.

I bought one plant at a fair or something years ago and I never planted it, kept it in the original pot next to the deck. Well, slowly it started to spread under the deck and on both sides of the stairs, etc., and spread more and more and now it's everywhere. We have an area of brush and wild grass and stuff and they're there which is next to the coop and they kept stabbing my butt when I was putting the dog kennel in around it LOL they're all in the grass and some low some tall and bent every which way so kinda hard to see and easy to step on. There's wild blueberries too but we never had a blueberry plant. The wild birds and critters devour all those in the spring. The raspberries have even creeped to the front yard, along the woods, and all the way up to the hill even though we never had it up there. And we have a large property, almost 3 acres, so that's a far way. A lot of it os woods but still, at least half is the yard and all the way from the backyard to the front yard and up a hill is very far. No clue.how it got there.

My grandma used to have raspberries too, in rows, but not for a while.

I would love to have fresh raspberries but it seems like a lot of work and I don't even really like raspberries that much so doesn't seem worth it to tame it at this point.

But good luck with yours!