I can grow moss instead. It is fascinating to see how on this little pot there are about six distinctive mosses trying to make a living.
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That raspberry species needs them.
Do they? I knew they like an acidic soil but don’t recall reading about the moss bit. I wanted them as ground cover around trees but normally there isn’t enough surface humidity to support moss.
I’ve observed them in the Alaskan wild. They spread their roots between the moss and the permafrost.
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Moss in Mid-Atlantic east coast for me grows where it’s cold, dark, and damp. I imagine Alaska in the winter is quite “cold, dark, and damp”. The moss tends to be shallow, you can scrape it off with a rake. I did read they fix nitrogen.
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Where i am moss is a function of water; my potted plants get mossy like that because of irrigation. Under the trees the wind dries the very top layer so no moss there. An inch down it is moist humus.
I figure if i get a good ground cover that it will keep the area with more humidity and hopefully keep some of the creeping grass at bay.
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Beautiful moss. I was about to give up on mine, but today it rewarded my patience with a first bloom.
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I got something like 10 of the arctic raspberry ground cover from Honeyberry USA last year. I forget which cultivars they sell but at least back then it was just two kinds. They came extremely in extremely wet soil and small. Over summer they grew a bit. They die to looking like nothing during winter so you can see them. This spring they are all coming up again and they have already filled some pots nearly all the way in just one winter and summer. Keep in mind those pots are around 3-4 feet so they spread very quickly. I would not be concerned about them dying. I would be concerned about them just taking over. The people trying to replace lawns with ivy and clover should really try arctic raspberries because of their spread potential.
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I should add moss does not grow around here as it is too dry so even if you don’t have moss it should do well. I just notice most of the spreading goes on during winter time.
that lowbush blueberry i sent you has some arctic raspberries mixed in the roots. your welcome. 
ive had mine for 4 years now with 4 different cultivars from 2 different nurseries. i havent got a handful of berries yet but they have spread all over the yard under my trees and bushes. at least they’re keeping the weeds out.
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There is a cultivar from Alaska that differs a bit from our native red raspberry here in the lower 48. It was sold up there by a few nurseries that found them growing and folks planted them as living fences to keep out the moose and deer etc. It propagates by seed and roots also and the folks that planted them saw that they started showing up in their gardens and everywhere. I have a few of them going. Berries are a little bigger and canes are much more thorny.
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I have the four named varieties but I do plan on getting the wild local ones at the first opportunity.
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if you have a few wild ones to spare id buy them from you. maybe a wild introduction would get mine to finally fruit.
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They will really take off in their second year. Maybe you can crack the code and figure out how to get them to fruit?
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I’ve live in Alaska for decades. There is no known bramble here that can function as a living fence against deer, much less moose. Kiska is the most vigorous raspberry cultivar I’ve ever seen; it was bred here in Fairbanks and is half wild. But the moose will laugh at anyone who thinks it will hinder them in any way. A stout 8 foot fence is what it takes.
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I have them spreading all over my place. No moss in sight. I’ve seen the wild version here in Alaska that sometimes grow in boggy areas, but they’re not dependent on any kind of moss. The cultivated ones in the yard (which are hybrids of the Alaskan and European subspecies) bear gallons each year with no care or maintenance. The Swedes who bred them called them “allfieldberries.” I also have some Finnish raspberry cultivars (Anelma, Heisa, Heija) which are upright raspberries hybridized with arctic raspberries. They don’t capture the insanely complex flavor present in the arctic raspberries, but are much less acidic and more palatable to eat out of hand than regular raspberries. The Finns called those “nectar raspberries.” Good luck finding them; I’m not aware of any in the trade and obtained mine by propagating root cuttings from the USDA germplasm repository in Corvallis. It took multiple attempts to get them going, but finally succeeded. Anelma has the largest berries; Heisa’s are smaller, but the canes are more rampant and productive. Heija should fruit this year.
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I trust your experience.
Seller was brownbearmaintenance in Anchorage Alaska. I talked to him and he said he found it growing while on a hike and they had thorns like none of the others. His talk of the living fence against moose and deer was his own… no clue if true or false in his case. He sold me dozen or so very nice plants and i planted them here in the wild… mostly for bird forage etc.
He sold them to locals but changed things once he figured out that Joan J was what locals wanted and he said he sells them now.
Funny enough the fence has to be sturdy enough to survive the winter, the moose are stupid enough to be hindered by even a flimsy one. The caveat is that if two male moose see each other across any fence during mating season they will tear it down to get at each other.
I use deer fencing at my place. Tall enough they don’t test it nor try to jump it. Honestly they could probably walk through it. It looks like this:
On the other hand, male moose seeing each other across a sturdy military base fence?
Spoiler alert, that fence came down.
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lol! rutting bull moose are no joke! my grandfather told me a story about a large bull moose that was in the road during rut. he refused to move so my grandfather honked his horn . the bull walked up to the front of my grandfathers truck bashing into the grill ripping it off. the bull walked away with the pickup grill stuck in his antlers. he managed to also destroy the radiator in the process.
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And they grow extra large here. I think the average weight of a lower 48 moose is about 1,000 pounds. Here on average you see 1,200 to 1,600 for a good specimen, with the record holder north of 1,800. They can be 7’+ at the shoulders.
My daughter and I were plinking moose yesterday with a pellet gun to dissuade them from establishing a roaming path near our orchard. They were two young bucks, looks like fresh out of leaving mom. Like most species teenagers are the worst; one whiff of us and you could see the hair on the back of their necks going up as in getting ready to get aggressive. The big one took about four pellets before he got the message; I would shoot him in the butt and he would just turn around looking for what stung him. It took them a minute before they got the brilliant idea to run away.
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