Urban Gardener: Raspberry Razzle Dazzle

Saturday, July 05, 2014

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Raspberries (Rubus idaeus) are among the most rewarding of berry crops. Few can compete with this member of the rose family for delicious, heavy yields for minimal effort. Urban gardeners are now venturing into their luxuriant raspberry patches for a garden highlight, to pick your own berries. Here’s an easy and abundant plant for any garden and you can grow them too.

The colorful raspberry offers good crops from second year growth. A perennial, raspberries thrive in rich highly organic soil. Soils under constant mulch combined with top dressings of manure in winter are just right for raspberries. Don’t think the raspberry is fussy or needs coddling. Rather, improve your soil with plenty of organic matter and keep an eye on drainage. Raspberries thrive in soils that retain moisture. Most heavily enriched soils qualify. They do best in sunshine. When happy, they send runners out under mulches and the highest level of topsoil to establish thick colonies. Thin as needed.

Raspberries are found around the world and are a North American plant. This member of the rose family shares like its cousins , a need for sunshine. Most common varieties are the classic “raspberry” red or purplish color. They are related to blackberries. There are hybrid cultivars in yellow, white, purple and of course, the black berry. If you wish to cultivate different colors of raspberries, which all retain the robust flavor of the natural red, plant colors apart. The plants will cross breed if within 100 feet of one another and produce hybrids of unique colored berries. Perhaps you’ll wish to develop a personal variety for fun and plant different colored berries closer and experiment.

The raspberry offers heavy yields of delicious and delicate berries. Always expensive in the market, ripe raspberries do not travel well. Indeed the weight of a full basket will crush the lower levels. The challenge to the home gardener is to not eat as many berries at picking as saving. This is the conundrum all gardeners relish.

Raspberries grow up to five feet tall and form robust clumps, sometimes patches. Gardener’s restrain the berry bearing canes with different systems, all more or less simple and affordable. Re-purposed posts and wire guides will not only define a rambling patch but also keep the top heavy canes from falling over. Wherever raspberries touch the ground, they will root. This is an indication of how to propagate new canes for family and friends. Runners, layering, and rooting cuttings will all produce new raspberries.

This berry is a true space saver. Adaptable to many situations, it is unhindered by fences or traffic. Older canes can become thorny and discourage pets and most people. Under optimum conditions, raspberries spread, a benefit for the budget conscious. A certain cold heartedness is needed to thin out the rampant growth. Develop a network of garden friends and share your bountiful plants with others in the grand old garden tradition. Swap varieties, one by one I’ve placed five varieties in patches that have merged into a mass of berry filled canes. The berry is the most distinguished means to discern varieties.

Raspberries offer their most heavy yield in early summer just as the last strawberries are disappearing from the garden. A little easier on the back for picking, raspberries segue nicely from strawberries to another champion experience in home gardening. Urban gardeners as well as their country cousins enjoy fresh picked berries. Raspberries, not eaten on the spot, freeze well.

A lesser but equally welcome crop appears in late September. Golden raspberries are noted for their late season and it’s possible to stagger the harvest given room enough to cultivate a sequence of bearing plants. However, for most gardeners, a small patch will reward with plenty of delicious berries.

A lovely herbal tea is steeped from raspberry leaves. The leaves can be dried like most herbs in a well- ventilated shaded place. The rafters in attics or garages are good places to suspend flowers, herbs and everlasting flowers such as the strawflower. Tie in generous bunches and hang from the rafters. I string a good quality rope in the highest part of the sloping garage rafters to hang plants I wish to dry for future storage. I simply hang bunches of herbs and flowers tied together with jute twine and leave alone. Try not to sweep the floors under the drying materials. They’ll keep well up in the air. If you wish to contain the materials choose containers certain to not retain moisture or they’ll mold into uselessness. Brown paper lunch bags are inexpensive and recyclable containers just about right for this purpose. Easy to label and a convenient size brown paper bags are a blessing. Tie with a ribbon and viola, a gift.

Many other berries are suitable for the home garden. Aside from the ubiquitous and worthy strawberry, grapes do very well in urban gardens. This vigorous vine has North American ancestors immune to many old world diseases. Concord is an old fashioned favorite, most notably the chief ingredient in grape jelly. Propagated from cuttings, grapes hesitate for a season to establish a root system and go forth to conquer the world. One of life’s supreme pleasures is to smell ripe berries, grapes offer distinctive aroma. Beware of drunken bees feasting on fermented wind falls.

Grapes offer bountiful crops enjoyed by people, birds, and smaller mammals such as squirrels and opposums. Happily, they produce very large yields which off-set the pilfering by others. Grapes love to climb and will not only offer the gardener a chance to create very comfortable shady arbors but also cover decrepit or chain link fences. Their leaves are a major ingredient in Mediterranean cuisine. Seedless varieties are out there although grape seeds are a major source of nutrition. Grapes will emesh or grow into trees and up beyond the tallest ladder. Keep yours in hand by pruning in the off season. Numerous home gardeners cultivate grapes in the city as a shady arbor for picnic tables and over otherwise underutilized spaces such as over driveways. When established in fertile soils, grapes have few pests and suffer more from the number of creatures who enjoy eating them. This is one crop you’ll compete for harvest.

Lush patches of raspberries and shady evocative grape arbors are perfect choices for the space conscious urban gardener. Whether it’s the near untended robust growth and heavy yield of the raspberry you crave or the shady classic grape arbor perfect for peaceful shade during the dog days of summer, grow these perennial berries for their nutritious and tasty crops. Many will never make it to the kitchen but remain as cheerful stains on fingers and lips, coloring grins from old and young gardeners alike. Put some razzle dazzle in your life and unleash your family and friends into the heavily laden berry patch. Enjoy the quiet fun that etches memories on the soul as it nourishes the body. Give off shoots to others for their garden and spread the joy. There is much to be grateful for in the urban garden.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

Urban Gardener: Raspberry Razzle Dazzle

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