Good Morning all…
Keep in mind I am not a raspberry expert at all… Planted my first Raspberries last spring.
I ordered 3 heritage reds, and 3 fall golds… but over time I figured out that what I actually got was…
3 heritage reds, 2 fall golds (those are everbearing), and one Mystery Black Raspberry (june bearer).
Several weeks ago, as my raspberry plants were first budding out some, I propagated several, some from Tip Rootings, and many more from (root shoots)… The heritage reds are very eager to send up shoots from the roots, and some 2-3 ft away from the mother plant.
The pic above is from my first propagation attempt and was dated March 15.
100% success rate… all of those have been planted and are looking great now.
But… I thought that was it… I am done with that… but not so… Since then many more new primocanes have come up (outside my intended row area)… and so yesterday I collected a few more.
Just sharing a few pics of how I did that in case it will help someone else.
First here is a PIC of my Mystery Black Raspberry, showing that it is sending up a bunch of primocanes right off the crown… I counted 7 or 8 coming up there…
Question - should I limit those to for example only the best 2-3 ? it seems to be putting out an excess to me.
And this time around I also found some black raspberry root shoots coming up - but this one I took a pic of was close enough to my row that I left it.
What I noticed is that the black raspberry root shoots, have darker green leaves, but the thorns near the base of the root shoot are almost clear, white. If you look close you can see that.
Now below is a root shot from a Heritage Red…
Notice the abundance of red thorns… that makes their root shoots very easy to ID. They produce an abundance of these…
The fall gold also have somewhat clear, white, thorns on the root shoots… but the plant color, stem and leaves are a much lighter green color. That makes them pretty easy to ID as root shoots.
Fall Gold does root shoot some, but much less than the Heritage reds.
Ok… now how I removed them from my hill, and re-potted, to propagate…
Simply dig around the root shoot with a shovel or some tool that you can take the root shoot out, including perhaps a 5-6 inch circle of dirt (root ball) with it. In the pic above there was a double root shoot up in that location just a few inches apart, and I took them both out.
Note when I remove a root shoot like that, I will fill that hole with a nice compost mix, to pay it back a little.
then I simply place that root shoot, root ball and all in a nice planter pot, and pack good with a good compost mix. Then water it in good (very important). Reduce stress as much as possible, water good.
PS… My wife bought me that watering can there… in the early 90’s for my birthday… and it has seen a lot of use, every year. Love that thing. It carries 2 gal.
After I collected all of the root shoots I could yesterday morning, and watered them good… I put them in a location on the north side of my house… indirect light only… and I removed excess leaves, leaving only the newest top leaves.
I will leave them in that indirect light location for 3-4 days, then move them to a morning sun only location for 3-4 days, then may move them on out to a full sun location.
PS… I started a new raspberry bed yesterday too… and the hope is that I will have that all finished and ready in 2-3 weeks… and these new Props will go in then.
Hope this helps… and by all means if some of you more experienced Raspberry growers can recommend how this process could be improved, for better success rate, or perhaps simplifying it some… but all means pitch in.
Here is something for new raspberry growers to realize… I planted 3 heritage reds last spring…
I now have those original 3, and many more in my original raspberry bed.
But… I have propigated 16 others from root shoots like this, and have spread them thru out my food forest bed, gave some to my daughter, etc…
I would highly recommend that when you prepare and plant a bed of red raspberries (especially heritage red)… that sometime that summer, or fall… you prepare another bed, perhaps 2x the size, for all of the props that you will get from the root shoots off your original plants.
Good Luck to all growing Raspberries.
TNHunter
