Raspberry Remontant. Part 6

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Raspberry remont: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Technology of growing remontant raspberries

Caring for plantings of remontant raspberries

Caring for a remontant raspberry plantation includes watering, loosening the soil, feeding and weed control. Due to the one-year cycle of growth, fruiting and superficially located root system, remontant raspberries need not only soil nutrition, but also regular watering, especially during dry periods. However, gardeners should be aware that watering should not be too abundant, since two to three hours of stagnation of water after watering can cause the death of a significant part of the small suction roots located in the upper root layer of the soil. Such over-watering will delay plant development and negatively affect the quantity and quality of the crop. It is good to combine watering with fertilizing from mineral and organic fertilizers.

Loosening the soil on the raspberry plantation should be done carefully so as not to damage the root system, approximately within a radius of one meter from the center of the bush to a depth of 5-7 cm. To preserve moisture in the soil and its loose state, it is necessary to mulch the soil more often with humus or peat.

Top dressing raspberries

And from the second year after planting, simultaneously with loosening and mulching, fertilizing is carried out with mineral fertilizers: in the first half of summer, during the intensive growth of shoots - with nitrogen fertilizers, in the second half of summer - with complex fertilizers with a set of microelements.

It has been established that remontant raspberries take nitrogen out of the soil the most, and therefore they are especially sensitive to nitrogen deficiency. Phosphorus and potassium, with good filling of the soil during planting, lasts for several years. And from nitrogen fertilizers, fertilizing with liquid organic fertilizers is especially effective: fermented infusion of bird droppings for 1-2 weeks (1:20) or fermented mullein (1:10), which should be used 1-2 times in the first half of summer at the rate of 3-5 liters per 1m2 of fertilized area. It is advisable to carry out top dressing in warm weather and always after watering.

In the summer, in order to avoid thickening of the plants and deterioration of the light regime on the plantation of remontant raspberries, it is necessary to remove excess shoots in the bush and root suckers growing around it.

It has been established by experience that in most varieties of remontant raspberries, the bush should consist of 3-6 replacement shoots, therefore, excess shoots are removed with pruning shears at soil level, and green root suckers in the stage of "nettles" are used as planting material.

How to increase your raspberry crop

During the period of crop formation, in some varieties the shoots overloaded with the crop do not withstand the load and "lie down". Therefore, in the second half of summer, such shoots must be tied to a trellis before the harvest ripens so that the berries do not come into contact with the ground and do not deteriorate.

As noted earlier, during the fruiting period, the berries of remontant raspberries hang on the bushes for a long time without decay, they can be harvested in 5-7 days, which is especially important for gardeners who come to their summer cottage only on weekends.

In early autumn, before frosts, in order to prolong fruiting and obtain a harvest of unripe berries, some gardeners create a light shelter over the bushes made of polyethylene or non-woven covering material, which are thrown directly over the bushes. Such an operation extends the fruiting period by an average of two weeks, while not only increasing the yield, but also significantly improving its quality, since the ripening period of the berries is shifted to a warmer time.

With the aim of a more complete ripening of the crop in areas with insufficiently warm autumn, it is advisable to normalize the generative organs in the upper part of the shoot, where smaller berries are formed, and part of the inflorescences even dries up. To do this, you should first pinch the growing fruit twig when the first inflorescence is formed, then, as it appears, you need to break off 5-7 upper fruit branches, leaving 8-10 lower stronger ones for fruiting. Such normalization contributes to the rapid development of the remaining fruit branches, their timely and friendly flowering, accelerates ripening and increases the mass of berries. At the same time, the total yield does not decrease, and almost all berries have time to ripen before the first frost.

When to prune raspberries: fall or spring?

In autumn, with the onset of severe cold weather and the completion of fruiting, the remontant raspberry is cut off the entire aerial part to the soil, all the garbage is raked up, taken out from the site and burned. Then the soil is shallowly loosened, water-charging irrigation is carried out and mulched with humus or peat with a layer of 8-10 cm so that the root system does not freeze during the snowless period.

Long-term experiments in central Russia with pruning the sprouts of remontant raspberries after fruiting have shown that this work should not be rushed, it should be carried out in late autumn, when the topsoil is already frozen and even when the first snow falls. The fact is that until this time, nutrients are supplied from the leaves and shoots to the roots, which in the spring of next year will help the plants develop more intensively.

For a number of regions of Russia, IV Kazakov recommended pruning of sprouted shoots in early spring. First, spring pruning is more preferable for areas with warm winters, where, after the end of fruiting, the shoots continue to vegetate for a long time, accumulating nutrients for the next year's harvest. It was found that if after the autumn pruning for 4-5 weeks the soil does not freeze, then the buds on the rhizome begin to sprout (as noted in the North-West region in 2013) and can be damaged during the subsequent freezing of the soil, which will negatively affect the yield next year.

Secondly, spring pruning of shoots is also preferable for regions with a harsh climate and winters with little snow. Here, uncircumcised sprouts, left uncut, contribute to snow retention on raspberry plantations. In the spring, they should be cut out during the budding period, when the plants are replenished with growth substances that contribute to a quick spring awakening. This is especially important for the northern regions, since here the acceleration of fruiting and the yield of plants depend on the early "awakening" of remontant raspberry plants and the rapid growth of its shoots.

It has been established that in central Russia and in the North-West region, spring shoveling of snow from plantings of remontant raspberries and covering the soil with a black film or spunbond play an important role in accelerating the start of shoot growth. Under such a shelter, the soil warms up and thaws faster, and shoot growth begins 1-2 weeks earlier, which, in turn, will affect both the acceleration of the ripening of berries and the increase in yield.

New features of the remontant raspberry

Large-fruited and high-yielding varieties of remontant raspberries, which give an ecologically clean harvest of fresh berries in late summer - early autumn on annual shoots, open up new possibilities for growing them not only in the open field. They can also be successfully cultivated in protected ground conditions as a forcing crop.

Raspberries in the greenhouse

For this purpose, in the middle of summer, vegetative seedlings are planted in the greenhouse - seedlings, which, with good care, will grow intensively and after 1.5-2 months (faster than when growing most varieties of tomatoes) begins to bear fruit. Greenhouse conditions with artificial supplementary lighting and light heating without any problems allow you to get raspberries until the new year. During this time, from 3 to 6 kg of berries can be obtained from one meter of the greenhouse. In late autumn and winter, they will be more desirable and attractive than ever, which means they will have a high price, which, from an economic point of view, may interest the owners of greenhouses.

It should be borne in mind that during the ripening of berries, this culture is not afraid of lowering the temperature even to small frosts, which are detrimental to cucumbers and tomatoes. Consequently, heating of the greenhouse occupied by remontant raspberries will not be required at all in September, and in October, November, December, minimal heating will be required. After forcing (harvesting the entire crop), the heating can be turned off, and the next year you can get another crop from this planting, or, which is also very beneficial, use the plants as high-quality planting material for the implementation or establishment of new greenhouse plantings. All this will help to promote remontant raspberries to the northern regions.

The first such experience is already known. An amateur gardener in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, on his garden plot in a greenhouse, grew remontant raspberries, heating the greenhouse with a small stove for only 3-4 weeks (from mid-September to mid-October). As a result, five bushes of remontant raspberries of the Avgustovskoe Miracle variety gave a total yield of more than 15 kg.

Raspberry container growing

Experiments on container cultivation of remontant raspberries are already known, when a green vegetative seedling was planted in a container with 6-8 liters of nutrient soil. In 2-2.5 months, in this case, 1-3 well-developed annual shoots were formed in raspberry bushes, on which the harvest ripened three months after planting. In summer, containers with seedlings can be kept outdoors, in the sun, making sure that the soil in the container does not dry out or overheat. To prevent the container from overheating, you can dig it into the ground up to half its height or shade it from the sunny side. Closer to autumn, the container can be moved to a greenhouse or a loggia, just to a sunny windowsill, where the plants will bear fruit for another 1.5-2 months.

Experiments carried out by gardeners of Magnitogorsk and Chelyabinsk showed that when container grown on loggias of a multi-storey building, the best results were obtained on low-growing remontant varieties of Augustine, Golden Domes and some others (up to 1.8 kg of berries from one eight-liter container). Using several of these containers on the balcony, loggias can create a useful and surprisingly beautiful garden.

Ural gardeners use large pots, plastic buckets with drainage holes, and even large durable plastic bags as containers for growing remontant raspberries. However, it should be noted that the container culture turned out to be short-lived - in the second year it was no longer possible to get a good harvest, so the gardeners shaken out of the container with fruit bearing bushes were used as seedlings for open ground. But for those gardeners who want to grow raspberries at home, the annual planting in containers will not be an obstacle.

Raspberries in the landscape and in bouquets

Repaired raspberries can be successfully used in landscaping and in arranging bouquets. It has an amazing property - the ability to ripen on a cut branch placed in water. Green berries ripen gradually, becoming ripe, acquiring a good taste and aroma. Considering that up to hundreds of berries can ripen on one shoot, one can imagine how luxurious and fragrant a bouquet of several branches of remontant raspberries will be. Such bouquets can be used to decorate a garden house, and a banquet room, and an exhibition hall, since when cut, the shoots of the remontant raspberry retain their freshness for up to 10 days. Moreover, often the berries on such shoots are even larger than those grown in the open field.

And we can already say with confidence that remontant raspberries - this miracle berry - have a great future. Now it is rapidly conquering all of Russia, the CIS countries and abroad.

Galina Aleksandrova,

Candidate of Agricultural Sciences