Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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Larry Sagers Horticultural Specialist Utah State University Extension Service Thanksgiving Point Office © All Rights Reserved
This article is based on a column that appeared in last Friday’s Deseret Morning News. Read it every Friday for the latest gardening information.
Growing berries in Utah requires some attention to detail. Our soils and climate are extremely variable and so you will need to find what your soil texture, soil ph and salt levels are before planting any berries here.
Raspberries prefer rich, well-drained, organic soils. Heavy clay soils make them difficult to grow, because they in makes them more susceptible to root rot and iron chlorosis. If your soil is not in good condition, add 2 to 6 inches of coarse organic matter into the soil and add 4 to 8 cups of 21-0-0 fertilizer per 100 square feet to help break down the organic matter. Create raised beds or berms to grow the plants if the soil is too heavy.
Buy certified virus-free bare root plants from a reputable nursery to insure healthy, productive disease free plantings. Purchase your plants as soon as possible and plant them immediately. They are cold hardy so frost will not hut them. If you wait until later in the summer, potted plants are much more expensive and are harder to establish.
Plant them 2-3 feet apart and allow the suckers to fill in the rows. Keep the raspberry rows about 18 inches wide and leave enough room between rows to cultivate. Raspberries love mulches and a good mulch layer will help keep down annual weeds.
Water raspberries after planting to get them established. After they are established water them deeply and infrequently. They do not like the same watering schedule as lawns. Typically, they will grow well with 1 to 1½ inches of moisture per week. Increase this to 2-2½ inches per week when the plants are fruiting. Drip or soaker hoses work well and with a mulch layer helps conserve moisture.
For those who already are fortunate enough to have some berries in their garden, it is essential that you learn when and how to prune them. Prune them now before they start to grow, Remember that raspberries are perennial plants but the canes are biennial, meaning they only live for two seasons.
The two types of raspberries are June-bearing or everbearing. June-bearing plants produce a heavy crop of berries from June through early July. They grow vegetatively the first year, then produce fruit the following June. After the canes produce fruit, they die.
June bearing raspberries are easy to prune. Simply cut out the dead canes. The gray stems with peeling bark are dead and are removed after they produce a crop. If you cannot tell which canes are dead, watch the buds and see which one start to grow and then remove the others.
Leave the live stems because if you remove these living stems, you remove the fruiting wood which removes your raspberries. Never prune June bearing raspberries back to the ground each year because you will never get any fruit.
Everbearing raspberries produce two crops, one in June and one in the fall from September until they freeze. You have two ways to prune these kinds of berries. The first choice is to prune them exactly how you pruned the June bearing raspberries. Additionally on ever bearing raspberries, you should prune the live canes about four or five feet tall.
An alternative method of pruning ONLY FOR EVERBEARERS is to prune the entire patch down to two to four inches tall every year. This method eliminates the June crop and so your fruit production is limited to the fall. This pruning method turns ever bearing raspberries into only fall bearing plants.
RASPBERRY VARIETIES
(Summer) June Bearing: Newburgh, Canby (thornless), Tulameen, Titan, Latham, Chilliwack
Everbearing: Heritage, Ruby, Redwing, Summit, Amity
