Growing raspberries: the complete guide from planting to harvest

Growing raspberries at a glance

Contents

• Growing raspberries at a glance
• Summer-bearing or fall-bearing: which should you plant?
• Where do raspberries grow best? Soil, pH and drainage
• How to plant raspberries step by step
• Spacing, row width and trellising
• How do you prune raspberries? Two opposite methods
• Feeding, watering and mulching
• How do you stop raspberries spreading?
• Raspberry pests and diseases
• Winter protection, hardiness and plant lifespan
• Harvest, storage and how long raspberries keep
• Raspberry varieties for cold climates
• Zone table: planting, pruning and harvest in zones 3–6
• Common mistakes
• Frequently asked questions

Summer-bearing or fall-bearing: which should you plant?

A raspberry plant has perennial roots and biennial canes: the roots live for decades, each cane two summers. A primocane is a first-year cane, green, fleshy and unbranched, growing from the crown or a root sucker. Over winter it develops brown bark and goes dormant. The following season the same cane is a floricane: woody, brown, flowering, fruiting, then dead.

Summer-bearing raspberries fruit only on floricanes. New canes grow one year, overwinter, and crop the following July and August in a concentrated three to five week flush, with larger and more aromatic berries.

Fall-bearing raspberries, also called primocane-fruiting or everbearing, flower at the tips of the same canes that grew in spring, cropping from mid-August until frost. Because the whole cane has done its job by season's end, you can cut everything to the ground.

If you have room for only one type, plant fall-bearing. The pruning is impossible to get wrong, you crop in the first year, and because the canes are removed every autumn their hardiness barely matters. With room for two rows, grow one of each and pick from early July to late October — just never in the same row.

Where do raspberries grow best? Soil, pH and drainage

Sun and air

In the wild, raspberries are a woodland-edge plant. Give them six hours of direct sun minimum, eight if you can; in part shade you get canes but small, sour, late fruit. The row also needs moving air, because raspberries crammed into a still corner against a wall get gray mold as soon as it rains during bloom.

Soil and drainage

Roots are shallow — Utah State University Extension puts most of them in the top 50 cm (20 in) — which makes raspberries less drought-tolerant than most bush fruit and very intolerant of standing water. Phytophthora root rot is the commonest killer in heavy clay.

Test drainage first: dig a hole 40 cm (16 in) deep and fill it with water twice. If water still stands after 24 hours, plant in a raised bed 25–30 cm (10–12 in) high and 60–70 cm (24–28 in) wide, built from existing soil and compost. The same logic applies to planting fruit trees on wet ground.

pH lower than you expect

Aim for pH 5.5–6.5. The Royal Horticultural Society gives 6.0–6.7 and extension figures run wider; anywhere in that band works. Above pH 7 you get iron and manganese deficiency, showing as yellow-blotched leaves with green veins — which is also why wood ash belongs nowhere near a raspberry row. To lower pH, work conifer compost or pine bark fines into the top 20 cm (8 in).

They are nothing like as extreme as blueberries, which need pH below 5, but they sit at the same acid end of the scale as strawberries. Never plant them where you just limed.

Do not plant where raspberries, blackberries or potatoes grew recently: root rot, Verticillium and viruses persist for years, and University of Minnesota Extension advises waiting several years after removing a diseased patch.

How to plant raspberries step by step

Allow a morning for a five-metre (16 ft) row, most of it spent on weeds.

1. Clear every perennial weed first. Quackgrass, bindweed and thistle cannot be removed from an established row without digging out the plants. Dig, sift or smother the site for a season beforehand — the one step you cannot fix later.
2. Improve the whole strip, not each hole. Work about 100 litres (3.5 cu ft) of compost per 9 m² (100 sq ft) into a strip 60–70 cm (24–28 in) wide and loosen it 25–30 cm (10–12 in) deep. Width beats depth.
3. Check the pH. If it reads above 6.5, mix in conifer compost or pine bark fines. Do not lime.
4. Put the trellis up first. Driving a post into an established row cuts roots and triggers an explosion of suckers.
5. Soak the plants. Container plants stand in water fifteen minutes, until the bubbles stop; bare-root canes soak one to two hours and must never dry out in the wind.
6. Set plants 45–60 cm (18–24 in) apart, in holes wide enough to spread the roots sideways rather than down. Vigorous varieties want 70 cm (28 in); compact fall types manage 45 cm.
7. Plant shallow. The topmost roots belong no more than 5 cm (2 in) below the surface, with the crown at or just above soil level, and container plants go in at pot depth. Deep planting suffocates raspberries.
8. Water in with 2 × 5 litres (2 × 1.3 gal) per plant so the soil closes around the roots.
9. Cut the planting cane back to 25–30 cm (10–12 in). Removing the old cane pushes the plant's energy into roots and new shoots, and keeps nursery-borne spur blight out of your row.
10. Mulch 5–8 cm (2–3 in) deep with bark, conifer compost, straw or leaves, leaving 5 cm (2 in) of bare soil at each crown.
11. Write down the variety and the type. In three years the type is the only thing you need to know, and you cannot read it off the plant.

Spring or fall?

Early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked, is the safest time everywhere and the only sensible time in zones 3 and 4: the cane has a whole season to root, and frost heave cannot lift it. In zones 5 and 6 a second window opens from September into October, while the soil is warm and the air cool. Container plants go in any time the ground is thawed and you can water; bare-root canes and dug suckers must be moved dormant.

Spacing, row width and trellising

Set plants 45–60 cm (18–24 in) apart, with 1.5–2 m (5–6.5 ft) between rows and 2.4–3 m (8–10 ft) if a mower has to pass. Two rows a metre apart shade each other, dry slowly after rain and double your gray mold. Run rows north to south so both faces get sun.

Keep the row narrow

This is the most important maintenance rule after pruning, and most guides leave it out. University of Minnesota Extension is blunt: let new canes fill the row but never let it grow wider than 30 cm (12 in). Every sucker outside that strip gets cut or dug.

The reason is air. A row that spreads to a metre becomes a thicket where the inner canes sit in shade and the leaves never dry, and gray mold, spur blight and spider mites all thrive there. A narrow strip carrying 4–5 canes per 30 cm (1 ft) out-yields it easily.

The trellis

A summer-bearing cane reaches 1.8 m (6 ft) and gets heavy when the fruit ripens. Unsupported, it lies down and the berries rot. Sink a post at each end of the row, 2.4 m (8 ft) long with 60 cm (2 ft) in the ground, plus an intermediate post if the row exceeds 6 m (20 ft), and run galvanised wire at 60, 90 and 120 cm (2, 3 and 4 ft).

A double, or V, trellis is better: a 50–60 cm (20–24 in) crossarm at each post and a wire down each side, so the canes are held between the wires with no tying at all. If you do tie, tie each cane separately about 10 cm (4 in) apart, fanned rather than bundled.

How do you prune raspberries? Two opposite methods

Pruning summer-bearing raspberries

Right after harvest, July or August: cut every cane that carried fruit to ground level. Spent floricanes are easy to spot: grey-brown flaking bark, wilting leaves, dry fruit stalks still attached. Leave no stubs, which are entry points for fungus.

At the same time or in late fall: thin the new primocanes to 4–5 sturdy canes per 30 cm (1 ft) of row, or in UK practice 6–8 per plant tied 10 cm (4 in) apart. Remove the thinnest, anything outside the strip, and every cane with brown or silver-grey blotches at the leaf joints.

In late winter: tip the canes about 30 cm (12 in) above the top wire and cut back brown, winter-killed tips. Never take off more than a quarter of a cane — most flower buds sit in the upper half.

Pruning fall-bearing raspberries

Cut every cane to ground level. That is it. Do it after harvest in late October or wait until February; later is slightly better, since standing canes catch snow that insulates the roots. Cut no more than 2–3 cm (1 in) above the soil, and in June thin the new canes to 4–5 per 30 cm of row.

Double cropping fall-bearing raspberries

Instead of mowing everything down, you can take two crops from the same canes. On vigorous varieties such as 'Polka' and 'Joan J', cut back only the upper portion that fruited, to the last node that carried fruit. The lower two-thirds then crops in late June and July as a floricane, while the new primocanes give the usual fall crop. Both crops are smaller than one concentrated harvest, though, and two cane generations means more disease.

Feeding, watering and mulching

Feeding

Raspberries want their nitrogen early, when every new cane has to be built at once. Utah State University Extension gives 1.4–2.3 kg (3–5 lb) of urea per 30 m (100 ft) of row in early spring; the organic equivalent is composted manure at roughly 100 litres (3.5 cu ft) per 9 m² (100 sq ft), spread in April.

Stop feeding nitrogen by late June, because late nitrogen produces soft canes that never harden off, die back in the first hard freeze and attract spur blight. Fall-bearing rows can take a second, smaller feed in late May. Keep wood ash out of the row.

Watering

The critical weeks run from flowering to the end of harvest. University of Minnesota Extension puts the requirement at 25–40 mm (1–1.5 in) a week, rain and irrigation combined. Short of that the berries stay small and dry.

Water at the base, ideally on a drip line under the mulch.

Mulching

Mulch suppresses weeds and evens out soil moisture and temperature around those shallow roots. Lay 5–8 cm (2–3 in) of bark, conifer compost, straw or leaves over the row and top it up each spring. Bark and conifer compost also acidify slowly.

Never cultivate inside the row. Every root you chop answers with a new sucker, so you grow the problem you were trying to remove.

How do you stop raspberries spreading?

Red and yellow raspberries spread by underground suckers and take no notice of where you meant the row to end. Canes appear in the lawn, in the border and on the far side of the fence. University of Minnesota Extension calls sucker removal a regular annual task.

Never simply cut a sucker at ground level, because it answers with two. Push a spade in vertically a little away from the shoot, sever the root below ground and pull the shoot up with its piece of root, in May or June while the shoots are soft. If the row sits in lawn, the mower does half the job: a sucker mown weekly gives up within a season.

For a permanent fix, bury a root barrier. Since most raspberry roots sit in the top 50 cm (20 in), it should go at least 40 cm (16 in) down and stand 5 cm (2 in) proud so shoots cannot hop the edge. Heavy root-barrier fabric or steel edging works; thin landscape fabric rides up and tears. A simpler version is a 60–70 cm (24–28 in) strip of woven fabric down each side — woven, never plastic sheet.

Variety matters too: 'Heritage' suckers moderately, 'Glen Ample' is among the worst spreaders. Suckers are also free plants — lift a well-rooted one in April, cut it to 25 cm (10 in) and replant it, but only from plants you know are healthy, because viruses travel in the roots.

Raspberry pests and diseases

Raspberry beetle and fruitworm

Adult Byturus beetles, 4 mm (⅛ in) long, light brown and downy, chew flower buds so the fruit ends up misshapen and crumbly, and the females lay eggs in the blossom. The larvae develop at the berry's core and often come off with the fruit. Fall-bearing varieties flower after the main flight and are rarely hit. White sticky traps with a lure, hung from bud break, cut larval damage.

Spotted wing drosophila and cane borers

Unlike ordinary fruit flies, Drosophila suzukii lays eggs in sound, ripening fruit, which goes soft and collapses within days. Fall-bearing rows suffer most. Pick every two days, pick clean and chill immediately. Cane borers scar canes and cause tip dieback, and crown borer larvae kill canes from the base; cut out and destroy affected canes below the damage.

Raspberry bud moth

The larvae of Lampronia rubiella overwinter in small grey cocoons in the soil, under old bark and in cracks in posts. In early spring they climb, bore into the buds and hollow them out, then tunnel up the shoot. What you see is a shoot tip wilting and bending in May while the rest of the plant looks healthy. The remedy is housekeeping: clear old canes and debris over winter, replace rotten posts, and cut out wilting tips at once, because the larva is inside.

Spur blight, cane blight and gray mold

Spur blight shows as dark brown or purple blotches on primocanes around a leaf joint, later fading to silver-grey with black specks; buds in that section give no crop the next year. Cane blight and anthracnose cause similar dieback, and all three leave canes far more vulnerable to winter injury. Thin hard, keep the row narrow and go easy on nitrogen.

Gray mold (Botrytis cinerea) infects through open flowers and erupts on the fruit as a grey-brown fuzz, usually at the stalk end. One infected berry spoils a punnet overnight, and cool wet weather during bloom decides how bad it gets. Keep the row open, never water overhead and chill the fruit at once.

Root rot and viruses

Phytophthora root rot attacks roots in wet soil. Canes wilt suddenly in midsummer, often in groups following the drainage pattern, and the roots are brown rather than white. There is no cure — prevent it with drainage and a raised bed. Mottled yellow leaves, stunted canes and a declining crop usually mean virus: dig up and destroy the plants, start again on a new site and buy certified stock.

Winter protection, hardiness and plant lifespan

Raspberry roots are very hardy and come through a zone 3 winter without help. What freezes is the canes, and only on summer-bearing types.

The tips are most vulnerable. Mild winter injury kills the top few inches, severe injury the top few feet — and since the flower buds sit in the upper part of the cane, that is your crop. Three things help: hardy varieties, no nitrogen after late June, and firm tying. In zones 3 and 4 you can also bend young canes down and pin them in November so snow covers them; under snow it is rarely colder than −5 °C (23 °F). Fall-bearing rows need no protection at all.

Rabbits and voles gnaw bark under snow in February and March, and University of Minnesota Extension recommends a chicken wire fence around the planting. Keep grass short around the row in autumn and avoid coarse wood chip mulch.

How long does a raspberry planting last?

The roots are perennial and can live for decades, but yield is not. The Royal Horticultural Society says raspberries crop well for up to ten years; extension services put best production at 8–10 years and suggest renewing at 10–15. Plan a new row when the crop has fallen two years running despite normal care. The cause is rarely age but a build-up of virus, root rot and soil sickness.

Establish the new row on a new site before you tear out the old one, and buy certified plants rather than moving suckers across, because that is how virus travels. Pick from both for two years, then dig the old row out completely and keep the site raspberry-free for a year. Rhubarb or a green manure works well there, on the same logic as crop rotation.

Harvest, storage and how long raspberries keep

A raspberry is ripe when it slips off the receptacle almost by itself, leaving the small white core on the cane. If you have to tug, it is early; if it squashes, late. Raspberries do not ripen after picking, so a pale berry never sweetens in the bowl.

Pick every two to four days, early while the fruit is cool and firm, into shallow containers no more than three or four berries deep. Drop moldy berries into a separate tub as you go.

Expect about 1.5 kg per metre (1 lb per foot) of row per season from a well-managed planting, roughly 7–8 kg (15–18 lb) from a five-metre row.

Never wash raspberries until you are about to use them; South Dakota State University Extension is explicit that washing starts them breaking down.

Raspberry varieties for cold climates

Hardiness ratings follow USDA zones and come from University of Minnesota Extension's variety trials; RHS Award of Garden Merit varieties are marked. All are sold by mainstream North American or British nurseries.

What limits fall-bearing raspberries in the north is season length, not hardiness. The canes are cut off every autumn, so frost cannot damage them — but the fruit has to ripen before the first hard freeze. In zone 3 a late variety like 'Heritage' runs out of season, while 'Polana' and 'Autumn Britten' finish in time. Always pick the earliest variety you can find.

Zone table: planting, pruning and harvest in zones 3–6

Dates are windows, not fixed days. A cold, north-facing or exposed site behaves like the zone north of it; a warm south wall behaves like the zone south.

Two patterns stand out. The fall planting window closes entirely as you go north, because frost heave lifts newly set roots, so in zones 3 and 4 you plant in spring. And the fall harvest window narrows faster than the summer one: ten weeks in zone 6, barely three in zone 3. That is why summer-bearing types remain the first choice in the coldest gardens.

Common mistakes

• Pruning the wrong type the wrong way. Mow a summer-bearing row to the ground in March and you remove the canes that would have fruited in July. Identify the type first, and write it down.
• Letting the row get wide. A one-metre thicket yields less than a 30 cm strip carrying 4–5 canes per foot.
• Planting too deep. Raspberry roots are shallow: the topmost roots belong no more than 5 cm (2 in) below the surface, and container plants go in at pot depth.
• Not clearing perennial weeds first. Quackgrass and bindweed cannot be removed from an established row without digging it out.
• Feeding nitrogen after June. Soft late canes never harden off and invite spur blight.
• Watering overhead. Wet flowers and fruit are how gray mold gets in. Water at the base.
• Replanting where raspberries just grew. Root rot, virus and soil sickness persist for years.

Frequently asked questions

When should you prune raspberries?
It depends on the type. Summer-bearing canes are pruned straight after harvest: cut the fruited canes to the ground and thin the new ones to 4–5 per foot of row. Fall-bearing canes are all cut to the ground in late October or February. Never mix the two in one row.

How far apart should raspberries be planted?
Set plants 45–60 cm (18–24 in) apart in the row, with 1.5–2 m (5–6.5 ft) between rows. Just as important, keep the row itself under 30 cm (12 in) wide. A narrow, airy row out-yields a thicket and gets far less gray mold.

What soil and pH do raspberries need?
Rich, loose, moisture-retentive soil that still drains freely, at pH 5.5–6.5 — more acid than a typical vegetable bed. Above pH 7 you get yellow-blotched leaves from iron and manganese deficiency. Work in bark fines to lower pH, and keep lime and wood ash out.

Do raspberries need a trellis?
Summer-bearing types always do, because the canes reach 1.8 m (6 ft) and bend under fruit. Use posts 1.8 m above ground with wires at 60, 90 and 120 cm (2, 3 and 4 ft). Fall-bearing varieties are shorter and often manage on a single wire at 90 cm.

Why are my raspberries not fruiting?
Four causes cover almost every case: pruning that removed the canes which would have fruited; winter injury to the tips of summer-bearing canes, where the flower buds sit; less than six hours of sun; or a row so dense the inner canes never get light.

How do you stop raspberries from spreading?
Never just cut a sucker at ground level, because it answers with two. Push a spade in vertically, sever the root below ground and pull the shoot out with its root, in May or June. For a permanent fix, bury a root barrier 40 cm (16 in) deep.

How long do picked raspberries keep?
Red and purple raspberries keep five to seven days at 0–2 °C (32–36 °F) if chilled straight after picking; golden varieties only about three days. Do not wash them until you are ready to use them. To freeze, spread them on a tray and bag them once solid.

How much fruit does a raspberry plant produce?
Reckon on about 1.5 kg per metre (1 lb per foot) of row in full production, so 7–8 kg (15–18 lb) from a five-metre row. Four or five plants suit a family eating fresh fruit; ten to twelve fill a freezer.

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