Preparing the Raspberry Beds

Raspberries, my oh, what a fruit!  We have two 30 foot rows of raspberries, June Bearing.  There are two types of raspberries: Ever Bearer and June Bearer.  My favorite type is the June bearer as all of the fruit ripens within two to three weeks.  I pick and freeze them for use on my morning cereals throughout the year – one half cup of raspberries provide 50% of your daily Vit C among other good things.

Ever Bearers produce two crops instead of the one with June Bearers, but the berries tend to be smaller.  To prune June Bearers I cut down the canes that bore fruit any time after the plants are done fruiting.  These canes are called florocanes.  The new canes that come up in the spring are called primocanes, which will produce fruit the next year.  These I don’t prune at all, but after cutting out the florocanes I weave them onto my trellis.  They are next year’s florocanes.

Our Raspberry Patch after mulching in the Spring

 We mulch with our goat straw bedding and add fertilizer and compost along the rows and that is it.  Last year I froze over 60 lbs at very little cost to us.  Year after year they produce and I have little pest damage (as long as I keep the chickens out of the area).  Besides loving the fruit, the chickens will strip the leaves of the new, young priomcanes, killing them.

Our two 30 foot rows take about 16 man hours a year to work (not counting harvesting the fruit).  Early spring I weed, move the wayward primocanes coming up everywhere but under the trellis, and mulch.