Raspberry Crop 2016

I love Raspberries.  They are wonderful by themselves, with ice cream, in a pie, and, most importantly, they are terrific in a sour beer.  With my growing stockpile of sour beer I am thinking it would be awesome to have some home grown raspberries to create my own Framboise. 

I will be growing three varieties of Raspberry:  TulaMagic & Nova which are Summer Bearing Varieties and BP-1 which is a Fall Bearing variety.  These were purchased online from Nourse Farms which provides shoots with root stock.  The Summer Bearing varieties will produce canes this year that will fruit next year.  The Fall Bearing (or Ever Bearing variety) will produce some fruit this year and, going forward, will produce fruit on new canes every year.  I am buying 5 of each one.  This will be a multi-year project to get reasonable quantities of fruit.  No strong rational for choosing these three varieties - they each had what seemed like a unique characteristic.  Hopefully this will increase my odds of success.

I have decided to create a patch using raised beds.  I like the idea of raised beds as they allow me to control the makeup of the soil and they will also keep the plant restrained.  Raspberries can grow like weeds and invade areas where they aren't wanted.  My wife's family had raspberries in the backyard when she was growing up that they mostly eradicated.  There are still some shoots that come up in random locations in the summer.  I will build three beds.  Each one will be 10 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot tall.  This will give me a bit more than 18 in between each plant.  I will fill each box with planting soil/manure mix.

I have chosen a south facing location that gets a good 8 hrs of full sunlight per day.  I will be building a trellis system to help support the plant on one side.  The other side will be against the fence which I would expect to offer some support. 

The plants will be watered via a soaker hose based drip system.  I am gong to use a sprinkler timer to do automated watering for me.  Raspberries are recommended to receive 1-2 inches of water per week during the growing season.  I will need to calibrate the system to see how long the watering should last.  I'm thinking of starting out watering every other day.

This is a lot of work and is fairly expensive to set this up.  I had initially thought that there might be some cost savings associated with going this route given how expensive raspberries are (even at a pick-your-own orchard).  Not so sure about that any more.  Maybe if this goes well and I get a few years of fruit out of these patches it will have been cost effective.  Either way, I anticipate that this is going to be a lot of fun and that personal enjoyment will compensate for the cost.

Raspberry Growing Log:

• 3/20/16 - Built three 10x2x1 ft planter boxes and moved them to the back yard
• 3/26/16 - Had 3 yards of soil/manure delivered to the house to fill the boxes.  Built a trellis system using 8 ft 4x4 posts with 2 ft dug into the ground.  Setup cross bar at 4 ft above the top of the raised beds
• 3/27/16 - Filled the raised beds with soil and strung wire for the trellis.  The soil pH is between 6.5 and 7.0 which is right in the desired range.

• 4/2/16 - Setup drip system hoses.  Set them up 6 inches from the sides.  Setup PVC pipe between the boxes.  Buried the hoses under a thin layer of soil.  Running the system for an hour seems to get pretty good coverage of the top layer of soil in all three boxes.  I probably need to do some additional testing though.  Finally, setup the lower trellis crossbar and wire.

Partially covered soaker hose

• 4/6/16 - Received the 15 raspberry plants yesterday.  Took off early from work to plant them this afternoon as it is a fairly nice day (in the 50s) and tomorrow will be rainy but above freezing.  Seemed like a good time to plant these.
• The plants come bundled in a plastic bag with wet shredded newspaper.  I unbundled them and soaked them in a pale of water while I prepared the beds

• Dug a 2 in deep trench down the middle of each bed

• Planted each raspberry plant ~20 inches apart.  Nova are in the left most bed, TulaMagic in the middle, and the BP-1 are in the right most bed.  Set them into the trench such that the roots run down the channel.  Covered them with soil and packed it down pretty aggressively.  My wedding ring fell off during the process and I didn't notice until I'd finished that bed.  Had to take everything out and then doing some sifting to find it - which I did.  Felt like a moron.

• Turned on the drip system for 1 hr. There are 3-6 in wide wet bands that form on the surface of the planter box which doesn't seem like enough.  Sticking my finger into the dirt it seemed like moisture had gotten to the middle of the bed.  I'll have to keep an eye on this going forward.  Since the dirt was already moist and we are going to have rain tomorrow I'm not going to sweat it for now. 
• It may take 5-6 weeks for shoots to start to come up.  Apparently the main stem isn't likely to sprout and that the roots are the source of the new growth.

• 4/9/16 - Had some late snow this morning which covered the beds.  Per the web page, bare root plants should be able to handle some cold weather and snow so I didn't take any action to protect them.  Still a bit scary with brand new plants.

• 4/16/16 - Watered the plants on 4/14 for 1 hr.  Checked for soil moisture over the next day and a half and found that the middle of the bed where the roots are stayed fairly moist the whole time (although the surface dried up).  Installed a sprinkler timer and set it to go off at 2:00 PM every other day and run for an hour.  Watered this afternoon using the timer.
• 4/20/16 - One of the BP-1 raspberry plants has started to sprout a plant.  It is growing right at the base of the cane.  A couple of the Nova plants have small green spots on the canes that look like they might be the start of some active growth.  No signs of life on the TulaMagic raspberries so far.

• 4/25/16 - The sprout on the BP-1 Raspberry has opened up its new leaves.  The green spots on the Nova have turned out to be new growth.  I'm seeing little sprouts from the cane of the Nova Raspberries now.  They are getting close to putting out some leaves.  So far, 4 of the 5 Nova have started to show new growth from the cane.  Most exciting, there is now a new shoot coming up from the roots in the Nova bed.  Still no signs of life for the TulaMagic.
• 4/26/16 - The TulaMagic Raspberries have a couple shoots forming towards the base of the main canes.  So, I now have signs of life from all three varieties.  Very happy about this.
• 5/4/16 - We've had a lot of rain this week.  The raspberries have continued to grow pretty well.  I have growth on all 5 of the Nova now.  Most of this is from the canes themselves but there are several shoots coming up from the roots.  I have growth from a couple of the TulaMagic plants.  One of the plants has three pretty strong looking shoots right now.  The strongest shoot is from the BP-1 raspberries.  It is 6-8 inches tall now and has several branches of leaves.  This is the only sign of growth in all the BP-1 raspberries which is a bit surprising given how long ago this first one showed signs of life.

BP-1 Raspberry

• 5/13/16 - Had a lot of sun this week.  The plants have been continuing to grow well.  The Nova are doing very well.  Growth from all 5 canes and quite a few new shoots coming up.  There is growth from 4 of the 5 TulaMagic plants.  A couple of them have put up a few shoots each.  The BP-1 now have growth from three of the plants.

Nova Raspberry Bed

• 5/21/16 - Mix of sun and rain this week.  Haven't had to water in several weeks now.  Raspberries seem to be happy.  Have growth from all my plants now (only minor growth from a couple of the BP-1 but it's still something).  Put up some chicken wire fencing around to plants to prevent our pets from getting into the planter boxes.  Had a broken shoot that I suspect the dog had something to do with.

TulaMagic Raspberry Bed

• 5/30/16 - A lot of sun this week with little rain.  Ended up watering with my drip system on a couple days where the temperature was in the high 80s.  Some of the plants seemed a bit wilted in the heat.  They were fresher after the evening which was in the mid 60s.  Had rain last night which also seems to have helped the plants.  I weeded all the beds this week.  Hopefully didn't disturb any new growth in the process.  Existing growth seems to have done well this week.  Only one bit of new growth which was from the BP-1 this time - it was away from the roots a few inches to the north and west from one of the canes.  Another point of interest:  one of the laterals off of a cane in the Nova raspberries has put out a few flower buds so I may get a few raspberries out of this year's batch somehow.  This plant hasn't had any growth from the roots yet which is a bit troubling - I wish it would focus it's energy there rather than put out fruit but you can't reason with a plant.

Nova Raspberry Bed

• 6/6/16 - I found that one of the new shoots in the BP-1 raspberry bed had been dug out.  I assume this must have been the work of a squirrel.  The plant didn't have any thorns which may have made it more vulnerable.  Disappointing. 
• 6/12/16 - Doesn't seem like there has been a whole lot of growth in the raspberries over the last couple weeks.  I wonder if they are starting to run short on nutrients or something.  The leaves look pretty healthy still so I'm not sure there any action that would be advisable.  Also haven't had any new suckers come up recently.  Was hoping for more of these as new fruit will grow on them next year.  I should probably think of this first year as just setting the foundation for future strong growth by building up a good root base and not expect too much from the plants.  It's looking like I'll get to taste some fruit from the Nova raspberries this year at least as the flowers have continued to develop pretty well.

• 6/19/16 - Plants are still doing pretty well.  It looks like there are a few more suckers coming up.  I think I may have accidently pulled up some new raspberry plant during my weeding a few weeks ago.  The new plants don't seem to look the way I would expect all the time.  Looks like the BP-1 are going to have a few pieces of fruit this year.  One of the branches that has grown off the main cane has some buds forming.  The TulaMagic are having a strange issue where the leaves are curled upwards in the last few weeks.  I'm seeing this to varying degrees on all the plants.  It's been in the mid 80s here the last couple weeks.  I'm thinking this may be heat stress.  The plant looks healthy otherwise.

TulaMagic Leaf Curl

• 7/3/16 - The plants have continued to grow pretty strongly over the last couple weeks.  There are probably a couple dozen fruit growing on the Nova raspberries.  The first one is nearly ripe now.  There are a couple new canes that are higher than the first line now which is ~2 ft.  The TulaMagic have several plants nearing two feet tall.  They look very healthy.  There are a few new shoots coming up.  The first BP-1 plant is now about three feet tall.  It, as well as some of the other BP-1 canes, has started putting off some lateral branches which should be where they sprout their fruit.  Japanese beetles started to show up last week.  I've been picking them off every morning and afternoon.  Raspberries have fared pretty well so far.

• 7/4/6 - Put down a wheelbarrow full of compost onto the BP-1 bed to help it with it's fruiting through the summer.  I'll wait until late summer/early fall to add compost to the other beds.
• 7/10/16 - Have had about 4 or 5 berries ripen on the nova plant this week.  The birds got a couple of them (somehow they know how to identify the ripe ones) but I've gotten to taste a few.  They are pretty tart - not very sweet.  I may have picked them too early.  Japanese beetles have continued to be a problem.  I'm finding a few every night.  The plants seem very hardy and healthy though.

• 7/13/16 - First BP-1 raspberry ripened up.  Tasted side by side with a Nova.  BP-1 had a softer texture than the Nova.  It was sort of jammy.  BP-1 may be very slightly sweeter.  I think the Nova had a more pronounced flavor overall.  Both were nice.

Nova (L) and BP-1 (R)

• 7/24/16 - We've gotten a few dozen raspberries off of the Nova and BP-1 plants.  The TulaMagic plants growing off the original canes are starting to flower so I'll be getting some fruit from them as well in the next month.  The new growth BP-1 plants are starting to send off flowers as well.  We've been freezing most of the berries.  All the plants seem to be doing very well.  Most are above the 2 ft line by now and there are several that are getting close to the 4 ft line.  It's been very hot the last week - I've been watering a couple times a week for an hr which seems sufficient.

Nova Raspberries

• 8/7/16 - The TulaMagic raspberry fruit are ripening.  I got my first couple today.  They were plump fruit with good sweetness and a jammy flavor.  I think they may be the best of the three.  The Nova are just about done with their fruit at this point.  The BP-1 are putting out a lot of flowers.  There will probably be several dozen barriers from these this year.  Can't wait to see what they do next year.

TulaMagic (L), Nova (R)

• 10/8/16 - All the plants seem to be doing very well.  The BP-1 (Fall bearers) have put out quite a bit of fruit which is just about to ripen.  The Tula magic ended up producing a bit of fruit - I missed the ripening so a lot of it has rotten on the vine.  Ate some that were overripe.  They were dark red and soft but were quite a bit sweeter than the ones I picked earlier.  The nova put out a pretty decent bunch of raspberries from the new growth this year. All the plants have start to lose their lower leaves and the stalks have started to become more woody.  Seeing how well they've done with minimal attention for the last two months really makes me feel silly about how much I was fretting over their health when growing - they seem to be as hardy as a weed.  Will keep this in mind as I establish my new beds.
• 4/15/17 - Read about my new Raspberry Crop here

Lessons Learned:

1. TBD