If you love fresh raspberries or blackberries, you’ll be glad to know how easy they are to grow. These delicate and perishable fruits are expensive in the market, but you can plant your own small patch and produce enough for fresh eating and freezing, too.

When planning your patch of brambles (as these fruits are known), follow the instructions in the “Discovering Berry Patch Basics” section, earlier in this chapter. Pay special attention to air circulation and soil drainage. Taking weed-control precautions before you plant is also important because most brambles sport hooked thorns that make weeding the mature plants difficult and shallow roots that hoes easily damage. Raised beds work well with brambles. Allow at least 8 feet between rows of plants. Don’t plant where other brambles or potatoes, tomatoes, or eggplant have grown in recent years due to risk of Verticillium root disease infection. It’s also best to eliminate nearby wild brambles, if possible, because they often spread disease.

Brambles range in growth habit from upright to sprawling — some stand up on their own, but most need trellis supports to keep the fruiting canes off the ground. A typical arrangement consists of a T-shaped post and crosspiece at either end of the row with taut wires or heavy twine running between them down the length of the row. You can also tie trailing varieties of blackberry to wire fence or other flat support.

Shoots called canes grow from either the roots or crown of the plant. Brambles are biennial, which means that plants flower on second-year canes, which subsequently die. Canes are called primocanes the first year they sprout and floricanes in their second year. Floricanes die after fruiting and should be pruned out. Most raspberries and blackberries produce fruit only on the floricanes and are called summer-bearing, but some raspberry varieties, often referred to as everbearing, also produce on primocanes in the fall. Although most raspberries produce red berries, some varieties have yellow or purple fruit.

Depending on your personal preference and climate, you can choose from several bramble types and many different varieties for your garden:

• Red raspberries: This delicate fruit grows best in cool climates. Most varieties bear one crop per year, but others produce two.

  Prune summer-bearing raspberries twice a year. After summer fruiting, remove all the floricanes. In early spring, prune out winter-damaged and weak canes, leaving about 3 to 4 vigorous canes per square foot or roughly 6 to 9 inches between canes. Cut these remaining canes back to about 3 to 4 feet high, as shown in Figure 5-2. You can treat the everbearing types similarly or prune all the canes to the ground in late autumn or early spring. This severe pruning forfeits the summer crop, but yields a bumper crop in autumn.   

  Summer-bearing red varieties include ‘Latham’, ‘Boyne’, ‘Killarney’, ‘Milton’, ‘September’, ‘Canby’ (nearly thornless), and ‘Nordic’. Everbearing varieties include ‘Heritage’, ‘Autumn Bliss’, and ‘Indian Summer’. Yellow varieties include ‘Fall Gold’, ‘Amber’, and ‘Honeyqueen’. Purple varieties share red and black raspberry parentage and may resemble either one.  ....read more