Spring Raspberry Care: A Beginner's Guide

Raspberries - one of the most favorite berries, cultivated by summer residents throughout Russia. But so that raspberry bushes at their summer cottage annually delight you with tasty and large berries, they need care from the very first spring days. In the spring raspberry bushes require special attention.

With the beginning of the summer season, many of us are concerned about the improvement of the land in their backyard. After all, spring is the best time for planting young trees and shrubs, and raspberries are no exception. Observing the simple, generally accepted rules for growing this berry shrub will help you to get a rich annual harvest of fragrant and beloved berries.

The most important rule for growing raspberries in the spring - planting should be carried out before the buds bud on the trees. Many novice gardeners are not aware of this and delay the planting time before the arrival of summer, which is extremely unfavorable for the full rooting of the shrub. It is necessary to think about choosing a place and preparing the ground for the future raspberry pan as soon as the earth is free of snow.

Approaching the place for planting raspberries, it will be worthwhile to think about the illumination of the selected area, its protection from strong winds and the relative humidity of the soil. You can not plant raspberries on wetlands and blown areas, it will not bring a good harvest and spoil the taste of even good varieties of berries. It is best to grow it in areas where legumes have grown, as well as cucumbers or zucchini.

The plot prepared in this way can be filled with mulch or covered with dark polyethylene - this procedure will accelerate the spring thaw of snow. Compliance with the simple rules for the cultivation of raspberry crops, later in this article will help you get a good harvest of berries in the first year of cultivation.

The following information will be useful for novice gardeners. Spring planting raspberries in open ground is made in April or May. You can plant it in two different ways - in the wells or in a trench. For planting the seedling in the hole, it is necessary to prepare a hole with a diameter of 0.5 meters and a depth of about 40 cm. The trench is made the same depth to a width of half a meter. The best location for planting - from north to south, it will provide the bushes full provision of sunlight throughout the day.

Garden raspberry is a very thermophilic plant, so choosing a place for its planting should avoid shady and blown areas. For those who are going to plant several trenches at once, it must be remembered that the distance between them should be between one and a half to two meters.

For planting should be selected healthy seedlings with two or three shoots and a well-developed root system. In the process of planting, in order for the space between the roots to be evenly filled with earth, dropping the seedling into a pit or trench, it must be slightly shaken. It is impossible to bury the seedling in the ground too much - this can delay the development of the plant, and planting too close to the surface can ruin the radical buds. Ideal is such a landing, in which, after watering and shrinkage of the soil, the root bud will be flush with the ground.

In order for the soil in the raspberries not to dry, after planting and watering the bushes it is subjected to mulching. For this you can use compost, humus, sawdust or peat, in extreme cases, you can use ordinary cardboard. The final stage of planting is pruning of young seedlings to a height of about 35-45 cm above the ground, while the bush should be buds that have not yet gone to growth. Such pruning will help to ensure the most favorable survival rate of young seedlings.

Raspberry care in early spring includes the treatment of diseases and pests, as well as garter raspberry vines. Immediately after the winter, it is necessary to prevent from attacking the bushes of its most dangerous enemies, such as:

• stem gallate;
• raspberry weevil;

• stem fly;
• raspberry beetle.

As a rule, the larvae of these pests late fall hiding in a layer of fallen leaves, where they calmly endure the harsh winter, so timely cleaning of the raspberries in early spring to some extent will help solve the problem. But only one cleaning completely cope with malicious insects, unfortunately, will not succeed. Therefore, after careful cleaning, it is necessary to spray the shoots with special formulations against pests. This must be done before the first buds begin to bite on the bushes.

The most effective tool in the fight against all these pests is a fungicide solution or bordeaux fluid. The larvae of the raspberry beetle can be destroyed by treating the shoots and the soil with nitrafene, agravertine or phytoverm solutions. For their preparation, take 200 ml of one of these preparations to a bucket of water. The larvae of the raspberry midge will help to destroy the solution of fufanon or actellica in proportions of 15 ml of the drug per bucket of water.

After treating raspberries from pests, you need to engage in garter raspberry vines. It is especially important to tie varieties with large and heavy fruits. The most common construction for garter shrubs is a trellis. How to build it correctly is shown in this figure.

Tying the raspberry stalks to the trellis crossbars should not be too tight, fixing each vine in two places with the help of twine or fabric strips. As a result, each bush must take the correct vertical position. Also for the garter, you can use the usual stakes, which are driven in between the plants. In this case, half of the stems from two neighboring bushes are tied to each peg. This method of garter will facilitate the care of the bushes, the collection of ripe berries, and everything else will not obscure the sunlight.

Proper spring cleaning of raspberry thickets will guarantee a bountiful summer harvest and an increase in the period of fruiting. Handle raspberry bushes in spring need in two stages.

The first stage involves the removal of weak, sick and damaged by winter frost shoots. First of all, it is necessary to remove from the plantations all the stems damaged by the larvae of the stem gall midges. On spring shoots without foliage, the habitats of this pest are clearly visible. They form characteristic swellings, predominantly in the lower part of the stem.

After the removal of all damaged branches, an additional thinning of the stems is necessary to increase the yield, since excessively dense thickets hinder the yield of raspberries. If thinning is done correctly, the bushes will receive all the necessary nutrients from the soil in abundance, and enough sunlight will be enough for the berries to ripen.

At the second stage, the bushes should be pruned during bud break. Tops of all stems are pruned to the first healthy and full-fledged bud, well tolerated for the winter. It should be cut all the tops of bushes, without exception - it will stimulate the formation of new fruitful shoots and increase the harvest.

In addition to pruning, in the spring raspberries is extremely important to feed mineral fertilizers. It is necessary to fertilize the land in a raspberry pan according to a certain pattern:

• The first dressing is carried out in the thawed, but not loosened soil, which has just freed itself from the snow.. Nitrogen fertilizers, such as urea or ammonium nitrate in the amount of 10 grams per square meter are used for top dressing. Along the way, with nitrogen fertilizers in each vine it is desirable to pour one cup of ash. This will help to neutralize the acidification of the soil after adding ammonium nitrate to it, instead of which it is also possible to use potassium nitrate, which has nitrogen in its composition, which will also prevent soil acidification.
• After fertilization, loosening and mulching the soil is necessary.which is carried out through the introduction of organic matter into the soil: grassy humus, straw manure or peat compost.
• In May, it is recommended to spray raspberry bushes with slurry, which is prepared in a proportion of 0.5 kg of manure per 10 liters of water. For processing one square meter will need about five liters of solution.

It should be remembered that before applying the fertilizer the soil in the raspberry pan should be thoroughly moistened. Ready-made complex dressing can be purchased at the dacha shop, or you can cook it yourself. To do this, take two parts of superphosphate and mix it with one part of potassium and one part of ammonium nitrate. After that, 100 grams of the finished mixture is diluted in ten liters of water.

Some gardeners prefer to fertilize raspberries only with organic matter, they adhere to the following proportions:

• fresh cow dung - one part per 10 liters of water;
• rabbit or goat droppings - one part per 10 liters of water;
• poultry droppings - one part per twenty liters of water;
• an infusion of nettle and comfrey - one kilogram of greens in a bucket of cold water insist one week, stirring daily. Then one liter of the finished infusion is mixed with 10 liters of water. To fertilize one raspberry bush, you will need about two liters of the prepared solution.

If raspberries grow in the same area for more than ten years, it will be advisable to transplant it to a new place. In general, raspberry transplantation is carried out on the same principle as its primary planting. Next will be considered step by step instructions for transplanting in early spring:

• We need to find a suitable place in the garden. We remember that in order to ensure planting with sunlight, the best place for the formation of a new raspberry is from north to south.
• Depending on the method of planting, we prepare trenches or pits at the bottom of which we place fertilizers from a mixture of manure with fine sawdust.
• We dig out old raspberry bushes with rhizome, from which we separate for transplant a small part of the root system with a healthy process. These young processes are formed in the root system of adnexal buds every year.
• Before planting, all prepared seedlings should be carefully checked for damage by pests. For planting, we take only absolutely healthy specimens with a well-developed, fibrous root system of at least 15 centimeters in length.

Since the roots of the shrub do not go deep, there should be enough moisture in the upper layer of soil to feed them.It is also necessary to fertilize the land in time to ensure sufficient mineralization of the roots and pruning to increase the period of fruiting throughout the season.

With good care raspberries very easily and quickly multiplies, tolerates transplanting to a new place. There are several ways to reproduce shrubs:

• The easiest way to reproduce this berry bush - lignified offspringwhich are formed in the root system of the shrub from adventitious buds. For reproduction choose the most healthy and productive bushes. One-year-old stiffened offsprings, located about 30 centimeters from the uterine bush, are dug out in early autumn, trying to save the maximum number of long roots. All offspring damaged by pests, as well as specimens with a poorly developed root system, must be rejected.
• In the spring, raspberries are easier to propagate with green root suckers. With this method, the raspberry bush is dug out of the ground very carefully, so as not to damage the root system, and young offsprings with a height of 10-20 centimeters are separated from it, which must be seated on a separate bed for growing. By planting in raspberry plant seedlings will be ready only in the fall. For reproduction, you can not take plants with a sluggish tip - this indicates the defeat of the bush with a raspberry fly.

• If the raspberry stalks are affected by any disease, then the most optimal way to recreate a new healthy raspberries is reproduction root cuttings. This method is good both in spring and autumn. For propagation by cuttings, it is necessary to carefully dig up the ground at a distance of approximately forty centimeters from the center of the bush and very carefully separate the adventitious root, trying to keep as many branches as possible. After that, healthy roots with a diameter of at least two millimeters are divided into pieces with a length of eight to ten centimeters, keeping fouling roots. Remember that on each harvested cutting should be located 1-2 healthy buds.

• The method of propagation by green cuttings is good for the beginning of summer. For breeding in this way using root shoots that were cut in the process of thinning raspberry. They select shoots with a height of 10-15 centimeters, on which at least 2-3 full leaflets are revealed. Such shoots are carefully cut off at the root, tied into stacks of 10-15 pieces, after which each such bundle is placed in a 0.1% solution of heteroauxin for 16 hours. After which the cuttings can be planted in a greenhouse. When the cuttings take root, in about 3-4 weeks they are dug out and planted in open ground for rearing.

• When breeding valuable varieties of raspberries, which give little root offspring, it is best to use for breeding way to divide the bush. With this method, 2-3 young and healthy shoots with a well-developed root system are left at each part. This method allows you to divide each bush into 4-5 full seedlings.

Starting spring work in the raspberries, it is extremely important not to trample the earth in it. Gardeners with experience advised to build for such a case the path of the light planks. Spring revision in the raspberries should be started immediately after the snow cover disappears. If in the fall you did not have time to cut the shoots that gave the crop because of the sudden snowfall, then this should be done in early spring. Such vines are cut to the very root, leaving no small hemp on the surface. Next, you need to conduct a thorough inspection of young shoots, cutting off from the vines all frost-beaten areas to the first living bud.

After you have dealt with the shoots, you need to get rid of last year’s leaves and dry grass, which experienced gardeners strongly recommend burning. This is due to two reasons:

• Last year's foliage can be infected with serious viral diseases that will spread through the soil and other plants, if you use the fallen leaves to lay in the compost pit.
• In fallen leaves, the larvae of the main raspberry pests, which are activated with the onset of warm weather, winter. Therefore, it is very important not to miss the moment when you can completely disfigure the soil in raspberries.

Another important advice from experienced gardeners is that it is strictly forbidden to dig up the soil in the raspberries in the spring even between the rows - this can damage the root system of the plant. This procedure should be carried out only in the autumn. In the spring, the land in raspberries is loosened, abundantly watered and mulched. This procedure is necessary to supply the root system of plants with a complex of nutrients and long-term preservation of soil moisture.

And finally, it remains to add that raspberry bushes have the ability to grow very quickly, capturing all the surrounding territories. To prevent this from happening, the raspberry cake is recommended to be insulated by dug galvanized iron strips around the perimeter.

How to care for raspberries in the spring, see the next video.