Pots of Fruit

Raspberry Cuttings - Rooting in Water

I've been continuing my experiments with rooting fruit cuttings in water and this time it's the turn of the raspberries.  I pulled one up just over two weeks ago from between the big raspberries and I stuck it in the water along with some more alpine strawberry cuttings.  I've never read of propagating raspberries or strawberries this way but I thought, well it works for other plants...So I just waited.  I had almost given up on it when I suddenly noticed two little roots coming out that were about 3 mm long.   That was yesterday and today they are even longer.  The photo on the right is an enlarged view of the little raspberry.  I'll leave it in the water for at least another week to make sure it develops a good set of roots before planting it up. 

Since trying this on the alpine strawberrie sI have read that you should change the water regularly to make sure there is a plentiful supply of dissolved oxygen.

After the success of this cutting I went out to search for more prospective cuttings. Tucked in under some of the raspberries that are planted in the ground I found two contenders.   The reason I'm trying this method of propagation is that I've found it tricky to get the cuttings out without disturbing the parent plant's roots too much.  I'vedug down up to six inches and still  found it hard to get the little fellas out so I have moved onto this idea for now.  Apparently it is also better to pull out the little suckers rather than to cut them out if you are trying to discourage too many new suckers coming up in the future.  Cutting them seems to stimulate new growth of suckers where as pulling them out mustn't. 

So I tugged at these two guys but they broke quite high up the stems rather than below ground as I had hoped.  But I'll still put them in water and see what happens.  I found a tiny little one hidden under another section of canes and this time it came out cleanly with a long white section of stalk that had been below ground.  I'll have to see which ones do better and see if it makes any difference if this bit comes out.

You can see all three suckers here to see what I mean.  The two on the left were broken on the green stem whereas the little one on the right has some white stem on it.

I pulled up some suckers of a different variety of raspberry at my Mums house and they were much easier to pull up.  All of them came up with at least a little bit of root and I could plant them straight away.  This could be because the soil around hers was nice and loose where as I have had to walk along the front of our raspberries, thus compacting the soil over time.  

This method of propagating seems quite easy and I'm going to keep trying with other fruits to see if it works with them.  I'm presuming that this will work best with soft wood cuttings, where the wood is still green.  I'm thinking of trying it on the fig next....

Experimenting with the Raspberries - Planting Suckers

I previously tried to grow raspberries in a pot and didn't have much success.  The canes grew and produced loads of new ones but there was very little fruit.  So I planted them in the ground in one of our precious beds (we don't have many as the garden is small).  But this year I am determined to try pots again.  I've learnt a few things since then so I'm going to put them to the test.  In general it is not recommended to grow raspberries in pots because they like to have cool and damp roots.  In fact within the UK and Ireland Scotland is the most suited to growing raspberries and it is indeed cool and damp.   

So I have planted about 12 baby suckers and will be trying out some of the things I've learnt on them.  I'm sure I should be able to improve the yield even a little.

To start with, the suckers are new plants that have sprouted off the mass of fibrous roots that makes up the underground life of a raspberry(from here on RB).  The RB is a perennial fruit, meaning that it comes back every year.  In theory it goes on forever growing one cane this year to bear fruit in autumn or the following year, depending on the variety.  This cane which has fruited will only live for two year regardless of the variety and the survival of the plant relies on its ability to send off new suckers all over the place.  They may appear within 1cm of the 1st cane or up to two feet away in my experience.  In the above picture you can see some of the new plants(right) starting to grow beside the parent plants(the big ones on the left).  However in reality the RB will fade away after about 10 to 12 years due to viral or root infections.  There is no cure I'm afraid and the RB seems to be very prone to them.

On the left is a picture of a sucker that I planted last autumn.  I dug it up with lots of soil still on the roots so as not to disturb them too much.  It is a good idea to plant raspberries in the autumn so that the roots have a chance to establish themselves over the winter.  Even though the top might look asleep, the roots are working away busily getting a head start.  I have also read that you should plant RBs when it is wet but not too wet.  So if you can't plant them in autumn you are best waiting till spring...presuming you live somewhere where the spring is a little drier than the winter.   

We have an autumn fruiting RB so I will refer to the care of this type for the time being.  Tip number 1 - I put in plenty of garden compost with ordinary garden soil and then added a top dressing of horse manure.  RBs like plenty of fertility so this is important.  The last time I tried with the RB in a pot I simply let it do its thing without keeping it in check at all.  So tip number 2 is to regularly remove any new runners come up in the first year of planting.  I have read that according to some trials that took place in Scotland if you don't regularly prune out the suckers it cam reduce the fruit yield by up to 16%.  So that would account for some of the problem we had with fruiting in our first attempt and growing RBs in pots.  When I planted my suckers last year I completely pruned off the original plant.  I did this because from previous experience I have found that the little s uckers do not grow very well once they have been replanted.  So I waited for more new suckers to grow from the original suckers roots.  In the middle of March they began popping up and in the above pictures you can see that I have pruned all the little weedy guys and kept the strongest one.  Any new suckers that appear will also be pruned out.   

The manure that I have put around the RBs should have two benefits.  One is obviously for the fertility, but the other is that it acts like a mulch.  A mulch on top of any soil will help to conserve moisture thereby keeping the roots a little wetter..tip number 3.  I haven't put too much manure on these little fellas cos according to one book I have read mulch may check the early growth of runners.  I've no idea why this is so I'll just have to see what happens.  So I suppose once your plant is established you can use this idea to better effect. 
Here are two of the RBs on April 19th.  They seem to be growing reasonably well if a bit behind the ones that were left in the ground.  It's probably not too surprising as they have been disturbed so it will probably be next year before the come to much.  Tip number 4 is to keep the pots nice and moist by giving them a bit of extra water now and then.  I am going to experiment with two sets of babies to see how this will affect them.  I will water one only when there is a long dry spell and I will water make sure the other one gets water after about 4 days of dry weather, and possibly more often in the summer.  I've chosen plants that are currently the same size in order to get a good picture of the effects of watering and I will report on this later in the year. 

Overall it seems worth trying to grow RBs as they are among the most perishable fruits, bruising easily and also going mouldy very quickly.  This results in the toughest and least yummy tasting RBs ending up in the shops.  I've never even seen organically grown RBs in Ireland although they may be for sale somewhere.  Apparently there has been very little research done into growing fruit in pots organically and so I'm hoping to learn a few things myself through trial and error.  For now, we're waiting for our crop in the ground to start fruiting.  I will record how much fruit we got off each plant and then I'll be able to compare this to the pot grown specimens and know what I need to aim for.

Caring for RBs once they are planted is very easy and this is another reason that they should be tried out.  Of course the fact that they are just gorgeous is what does it for me and I feel like we are in the lap of luxury when we have even little bowl of the golden fruit.