For a 15-foot row, you could plant at 1.5,3.5,5.5,7.5,9.5,11.5,13.5 feet (0 and 15 being the raised bed ends. That would be 7 plants. I would not try to pack them any tighter.
1.5,4,6.5,9,11.5,14 feet spacing would be six plants.
So, one or two each of the raspberries. Meeker has done well for us in SE Portland for the past few years.
Boysen is actually more spiny than Marion. I found the thornless Boysen to be unsatisfactory (small bland fruit).
I would avoid any of the later-season or the fall-bearing varieties of caneberry as the SWD fruit fly is very active in August and thereafter.
A 15-foot row of caneberries, well tended and watered, should provide the amount of fruit you require.
If you meant multiple parallel raised beds, just multiply the above recipe.
look at āfeatured berry resourcesā on this page, osu has guides for blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries:
Iām growing columbia star, sunrise, giant because theyāre some of the newest OSU releasesā¦ but no report yet, the first crop is ripening now. when I drive up I-5 I see at least one multi acre field labeled ācolumbia giantā and itās hard to argue with someone making money with a variety at scale. these are all early season
for strawberries I grow albion and hood. albion starts pretty early but itās not especially good (itās actually excellent, but only matches the best california berries I get at winco, which are as low as $1/lb this time of year). I value it for how early it is. itās day-neutral and produces a little all season which is nice. hood is an incredible treat, a very special berry in terms of taste, but doesnāt produce a ton given the space. relatively early (albion is earlier by about a week)
I have willamette raspberry and itās ok but in a shady spot so I canāt give a good report. early season so no swd worry
as you can see I stress early season when selecting berriesā¦ as the season goes on I have stone fruit taking over. blueberries are different, I have 3 months of blueberries planted
Yes, I was also heavily affected by a tent caterpillar outbreak. Luckily it has tapered off and my trees are starting to recover now. I made a bunch of new grafts recently to try and refoliate branches the caterpillars had stripped. Luckily most of the new grafts I did of plums, apples, and oriental/Euro pears are now coming to life. So the damage the caterpillars did was not quite as bad as I first feared. It looks like I lost a couple of grafts to the caterpillars, but not as many as I was expecting. I ended up grafting some apple rootstock sucker that I had only potted this spring. I had no intention of grafting them this soon as they were still only like 1/8 of an inch caliper, but the caterpillars were decimating them. I grafted on a bit larger apple scion wood I had on hand and it appears those have taken as well. Luckily I still had scion wood left in the fridge that wasnāt in bad shape to regraft the damage from all the caterpillars.
We hadnāt had any rain in almost a month here, and the last 2 days of rain has also really helped to perk up a lot of my trees that were looking pretty ragged. I even saw a new pear growing on my clapps favorite pear tree today from a cluster of blossems that bizarrely bloomed only last week. With nothing else blooming at that time except a Concorde Pear a long ways away I have no idea how it was even pollinated.
Other than finding a couple of leaves with apple rust today my trees are at least looking very disease free this year now. I have also been very lucky that the lady bugs have taken a liking to my trees this year and they have helped keep the aphids in check, (unlike last year). So everything seems to be looking up now that the caterpillars are finally dieing off. Keeping my fingers crossed that no further whammies are coming this summer for my newly established fruit trees.
I think Iāll graft out the rest of my remaining scion wood now that the caterpillar threat has seemingly passed. My success rate with my grafts and rootstocks Iām growing has been far above my expectations this year. I have over 60 pots of rootstocks of plum, pear, and apple growing this year that I either harvested from stooling or growing from seed. Many of the pots have more than one tree growing in them, so Iāve enough rootstocks to start a full orchard if they continue growing well.
Hoping my luck continues and my trees do well for the rest of the year.
ramv:With the Chilean hazelnuts, I will be very interested to see how that goes. I could be very interested in growing those if they arenāt too difficultā¦
John S
PDX OR
Great info on the parasitoid wasps. I was told decades ago that small flowered plants in the carrot family-Umbelliferae provide haven to these wasps. I grow many plants in this family. They help with apple maggot too. I have never had a problem with caterpillars. I also think that in general, the balance of nature will take care of the problem naturally, as Rachel Carson said, rather than setting up a titanic imbalance of kill and rekill.
John S
PDX OR
yeah, the three columbia [giant,star,sunrise] varieties are all floricane fruiting and I think giant and sunrise are notably early even among floricane varieties. same with willamette raspberry, itās floricane. for strawberries, albion being day neutral gets its first berries very early, then hood being june-bearing is early too
I just got a flat of āstellaā june-bearing from a eugene farm stand and theyāre fabulousā¦ taste almost as good as hood but much bigger. Iām making a note to maybe replace the hoods with this when they lose vigor
Iāll keep the forum posted.
I moved my seedlings to 1 gallon pots with 50-50 sunshine mix and organic potting soil. I mixed in some cottonseed meal for N,K and to make the medium a bit acidic. They are looking good so far.
If grown in well-drained raised beds, any of the red raspberry varieties are fine. At NWREC near Charbonneau, they grow red raspberries in rows 8 to 10 inches above the between-rows pathways. This reduces root-rot. The various varieties I tasted there were all about the same.
Keep in mind that red raspberry plantings spread like some bamboos. If you have multiple beds, reserve one or more for just raspberries.
I think the dwarf raspberry āNR7ā (marketed as āRaspberry Shortcakeā) might be tolerant of poor drainage. I havenāt tested it directly, but have grown out a bunch of seedlings from it that have all been unphased despite me keeping them in pots sitting in trays of water year round.
I like it when that works out, but donāt necessarily expect that there is always a balance that can be found that also includes selectively bred fruit that produce abundant large, tasty, sweet and nutritious fruits packed into a private property.
One small plant I purchased in April has one cluster of flowers. Other one which came in a gallon pot had flowers from the nursery but they dropped after planting. Does the short cake variety fruit later in the fall? I was thinking about putting some bloom booster fertilizer.
Just came across a couple of these planted as āstreet treesā (street shrubs?) here in Seattle, and for a second I thought maybe they were some kind of highbush blueberry, but upon closer inspection I realized I had no idea what they are. Any guesses? They look attractive, wonder if they make edible fruit.
