I want to move my canes (planted earlier this year) into raised beds over time. They would be along the wire garden fence, so I don’t need row spacing. The problem is I cannot find consistent information on how much space these plants need between each other. The two extremes for raspberries are 2 feet and five feet, and for blackberries 2 feet and 15 feet. I think a two foot bed is wide enough, but can the plants do well if it’s only two foot long as well (which should put the plants two feet from each other)?
Our garden has a slope that’s just bad enough to require leveling for large raised beds, and we were hoping to remedy the problem by building multiple 2’ x 2’ beds and putting them next to each other along the fence, rather than building several 2’ x 8’ beds that would have to be leveled. Do you think the 2’ x 2’ beds will work, or should we make them 2’ x 3-4’?
Edit to add: I’m looking at red raspberries, not black.
Raspberries- you can plant them 10 feet apart and in time they will fill in the row without pruning… so with rasps its is entirely up to you on how many canes you want to cull or keep. So in a 2X2… one cane per will have you busy removing canes.
Blackberries- Up to you and how much you want to prune… A 2X2 will probably give you one cane with each lateral 18 inches or so…which still is outside of the space limits… but doable.
If it were me and i had limited space… i would just go with grow bags and one cane per… since you talked about building raised beds…i think it would be much easier to just use grow bags…maybe cheaper. Plus root health will likely be better. YMMV. (plus you can move them easier at a later time if desired)
Probably wiser to go with your own mix instead of bagged soils or mixes…with additions of Peat and Pine Bark or Pine Fines etc… as most all potting mixes are pH neutral… unless you plan on acidifying the mix yourself etc…
In the end whatever makes you happy… and you will be pruning alot regardless…
@ krismoriah
I thought each plant would have a main root system and then put out runners where many canes will grow from. The canes I know will die back after two years, but the roots of the main plant will survive. Is my understanding wrong? I don’t want one cane per bed; I want one plant with several canes per bed.
I can’t do anything like containers or grow bags. The wind is bad here, so I’d be fighting them tipping as well as my own inability to keep anything in containers alive. I wasn’t going to make tall beds (maybe 6”), and I was going to fill them with garden-ready topsoil that I can get from a local that’s very high quality.
Am I correct to understand that I should only allow one blackberry cane per 3’ or so? That’s very few blackberries for the space they’ll take up…I guess I have to reduce my varieties to one.
Oh, I know they’ll have a lot of canes, but I’m trying to figure out how far apart the actual plants need to be. We can’t just make a really large bed because we’ll only be able to access it from one side, and like I said in my original post, our garden is sloped. Do you think my idea of planting one raspberry per 2’ is doable?
Ive been growing red raspberries for over 30 years along a fence in a 70 cm (28") bed, allowing 50 cm (20") spacing for each plant. I started with 6 canes per plant, but that was obviously too crowded to be practical. I’ve recently reduced it to 3 canes per plant, with the lowest branches pruned off; and that works quite well.
I mostly keep only new canes that originate from the original root system unless it doesn’t produce enough canes. This works very well with alternating primocane and floricane varieties in each pair of spaces, so that adjacent plants don’t interfere with each other as much as identical plants would. And I get continuous crops from late June until November.
Something useful that I’ve discovered in the last few years is that the raspberries grow significantly better when they are mulched with wood chips or shavings. Even varieties that were dying out from root disease seem to be recovering after I applied the mulch.
I mulch my raspberries and blackberries with woodchip… always have. A mix of wood chip and leaves would be ok too.
I have a row of illini blackberries with the original crowns spaced 3 ft apart… each year each crown sends up 2-4 primocanes and those primocanes come up within 6 inches of the original crown.
From 7 crowns I normally end up with 20-25 pcanes in the bed. They are upright and tidy canes so that works well.
Different varieties may stray more… some blackberries will send out root shoots 3-4 foot from the crown. If they come up in a nice location in your bed great… if not… you may want to dig them up and transplant… or give to a friend/family.
First of all, are we talking about red raspberries? Because black ones grow differently. To make long story short, I will not put 2 red raspberry roots on 2’ long bed. Minimum length for 2 I would say 3’, better 4’. Do not expect bushes to be very defined. Always keep strongest canes and remove weak and diseased ones. Make sure there is no more then 2-3 canes per liner foot of 2’ wide bed. Also, do not be under assumption your raspberry will stay in the bed you made for it. It will be running its runners to the nearest fertile soil in no time. I had a raspberry patch that regularly popped up in my garden bed (That I dig every year!) , despite it was separated by highly walked path and located about 2’ higher level, than the patch itself.
Yes, we’re talking red raspberries. Sorry I didn’t think to mention that (I honestly keep forgetting black exists).
Each plant would be given a 2’ by 2’ bed; if I understand you correctly, that should be enough space, yes? For a 2’ x 2’ bed, I should keep the canes down to 4 to 6; is that 4 to 6 primocanes with 4-6 floricanes that will be producing fruit, or 4-6 canes no matter which one they are?
Sorry for all the questions, but these are the kinds of things I can never find the information for!
If you want more control, look for varieties that don’t sucker (or very little). Otherwise, you’ll soon learn that most raspberries and blackberries do as they like, spread if they can to fill up any given space and you either let them be and (re)move them from where you don’t want them to be OR you’ll have a lot of work trying to stop them.
Many thornless blackberries will stay put, unless you let them root at the tip. As for spacing, maybe use the varieties’ yearly cane growth as a factor and/or go with the nursery spacing info for your selected varieties.
Another thing that may help with pruning: Don’t do the stupid thing that I did years ago and plant a floricane and a primocane variety where they can mingle underground. Because they will…
I keep 3 new canes per year. Primocane fruiting canes are removed at the end of 1 year, and floricane fruiting ones are obviously removed after 2 years.
I don’t expect to keep them too controlled. Where I’ll be putting them is surrounded by areas we mow, and pruning is one of my favorite parts of growing perennials, so I’m not worried about that. I was planning to alternate my (thornless) blackberries with raspberries every 8 feet to help me keep the different varieties separate. Combined with vitog’s ides of keeping the canes closest to the main root, I’m hoping it’ll be enough.
I think so. Once in a blue moon (~7+ years) and some could try to cross over, but that should be no problem. Raspberries are easily controlled with a mower - they do get the message (unlike blackberries) so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I usually do not double space for floricanes and primocanes.
Let me give you an example of fall red or fall gold raspberries. They give 2 crops a year. Let’s say I want to plant some of them in the new location. In fall, the primocanes already got into flower on the tops of the canes. So I prune most strong stand alone canes right below fruiting top(about 1/3 of the length from top) and replant them to the new location. In spring they start to grow side branches, flower, and start producing on last year primocanes that I prunned in fall, so they become floricanes . In parallel new primocanes started to grow from the roots and runners, and by the time floricanes done fruiting somewhere around end of July, primocanes are already taller than floricanes. At this moment the bed is pretty crowded. So I usually prune down all floricanes to make more space for the primocanes to grow and flower in late summer and fall. Somewhere in December I trim 1/3 of the primocanes below fruiting zone as well as old floricanes I missed in summer and weak or diseased primocanes . And cycle continues.
I mentioned grow bags because they literally take a strongman or a dolly to move them… as well as keeping the roots from circling in on themselves and less decline… You didnt mention if your 2X2 6 inch box was closed or open in the bottom so perhaps that would make a difference.
In case someone else has lack of space or poor soil… and doesnt want to build or buy boxes… grow bags are pretty neat. These are 15 gallon.
The info I got from an agricultural extension service is that one must not allow more than 3 red raspberry canes per square foot to have healthy plants. The rest must be pruned out to allow enough air circulation and sunshine and to minimize competition from soil nutrients and water. The other advice was to prune NOT during the growing season. In Michigan, I prune extra canes out in February or early March before the canes leaf out. So far by the Lord’s grace, we have not had any disease issues at all in our more than 20-year-old raspberry rows. If there is one more thing I will say is that, spare yourself additional work you may not need raised beds for raspberry canes if you have well-draining soil. Also, if you plant them by the fence, the raspberries will grow well beyond your fence. If beyond the fence is your neighbor’s yard, he may not be happy to have to constantly prune out the volunteer canes popping out all the time:)
