[FLPERMACULTURE] a curiosity in my garden

Wed Jul 9 09:18:05 PDT 2008

The tipping of the blacks needs to be done on the new shoots when they 
reach the relevant height (new plants are tipped lower than established 
ones). That is in early July around here. It isn't too late to do it now, 
even if  it means cutting off 18 inches that they might have grown beyond 
the tipping height. If they are tipped at more than 3 1/2 feet the berries 
are then hard to reach and the canes become apt to break under load due to 
the greater leverage of the fruit. If you get to it in a timely way, you 
can just break the tender ends of the shoots off. Later on you need 
scissors or pruning shears as the tissue stiffens.

Red raspberries are not usually tipped. They are headed back in the spring 
to live wood and naturally branch. You may even have to thin the number of 
canes to get good fruit size. So-called everbearing raspberries fruit on 
both the previous year's growth (in July), and on the current year's new 
canes in the fall. That fall crop is at the tip of the canes, so you don't 
want to cut it off. The resultant branching would fruit, but fruiting would 
be delayed. That means you might not get it at all, since with many of 
these cultivars fruiting runs into the period of risk for freezes, which 
ends the season.

To encourage fruiting in your reds, give them plenty of sun, keep organic 
matter content up in the soil, either by mulching or using compost 
(Raspberries don't like mulch, but they put up with it. I wouldn't even 
think of growing them without mulch -- too much work!), and feed them well. 
I use urine, which is an excellent fertilizer for most fruits except 
blueberries.

Joel

At 08:22 AM 7/9/08 -0700, you wrote:
>This is great info! I didn't know exactly which types of berry I had in 
>the fall so I cut some back as you describe below. Same method for 
>encouraging red raspberries? (which seem to be fewer and therefore I covet 
>them.) :D
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: Joel and Sarah Gagnon <Joel.and.Sarah.Gagnon at lightlink.com>
>To: fingerlakespermaculture at lists.mutualaid.org
>Sent: Wednesday, July 9, 2008 10:57:00 AM
>Subject: Re: [FLPERMACULTURE] a curiosity in my garden
>
>I had a similar mutation about 20 years ago, but mine was not particularly 
>productive. Black raspberries do not sucker, unlike reds. Tip rooting is 
>the usual way they spread, coupled with seed dispersion by birds.
>
>Are you tipping the plants to promote branching? The usual management 
>method for blacks is to nip the tips when they are about 2 1/2 to 3 feet 
>tall, which forces them to produce several new shoots just below the 
>clipping point. The following spring, these are headed back to a foot or 
>so long. Each cane thus has quite a lot of bearing area without being 10 
>or more feet long. They are a lot more manageable that way, especially 
>when fruiting. You still get lots of tip-rooted plants (more, in fact), 
>but they are distributed in a much smaller area.
>
>Yellow or "golden" variants of red raspberries are generally sweeter and 
>milder than their red counterparts. I didn't notice much difference in 
>either of those characteristics in my yellow version of a black raspberry, 
>and it sounds like you didn't either. From a nutritional perspective, I 
>think the anthocyanins are probably a desirable thing, so I have to wonder 
>whether the yellow-fruited version of blacks is worth promoting. Kinda 
>like white flour...
>
>Joel
>
>At 03:44 PM 7/8/08 -0400, you wrote:
>
>>I've been cultivating a "volunteer" gold raspberry in my garden the past 
>>couple years, which looks like a larger and more vigorous relative of the 
>>black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis.) When I mentioned it last year to 
>>Katie, she sounded surprised that it was propagating from tips instead of 
>>runners, and I finally this afternoon got round to looking it up. I 
>>learned that tip propagation is a distinctive property of the native 
>>Blackcap family, which is quite different from the other raspberry 
>>varieties. I was unable to find a commercially available "gold cap", but 
>>I did find a mention of it in <http://www.wikipedia.org/>Wikipedia:
>>
>>
>>"The commercially grown red and black raspberry species each have 
>>albino-like pale-fruited variants, generally due to expression of 
>>recessive genes affecting production of anthocyanin pigments. Variously 
>>called golden raspberries, yellow raspberries, or (rarely) orange 
>>raspberries, these fruits retain the distinctive flavor of their 
>>respective species, despite their similarity of appearance. In the 
>>eastern United States, at least, most commercially sold pale-fruited 
>>raspberries are derivatives of red raspberries. Yellow-fruited variants 
>>of the black raspberry occur occasionally as wild plants (for example, in 
>><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio>Ohio), and are sometimes grown in home 
>>gardens."
>>
>>
>>The fruit is, indeed, as luscious as a blackcap, but they do have a 
>>couple of downsides. One is that they get little dark spots on them when 
>>they're a tad bit overripe (caused by individual drupelets drying out 
>>around the seed,) and the other is that they propagate *very* 
>>aggressively, which makes it hard to maintain a small patch of them. It 
>>also means that I have *extra*, if you want to try some.
>>
>>
>>- Marty
>>
>>
>>
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