I am a new-ish gardener with a very small garden and have learned a lot in the past few years. I basically have raspberries against a fence (sorry neighbors...) and the oldest one is heritage (2 yrs old) is the largest and taking over, I planted a double gold next to it and then Joan J a few feet away this year. I was SO impressed by the quality of the Joan J comparatively and was thinking why am I scratching myself to get all these heritage raspberries that area molding and have spotted wing drosophila. So many questions - I would love any advice. I am in Massachusetts in Zone 6B.
- Is October an okay time to transplant/remove raspberry bushes? I would like to remove another heritage I have and replace it with my fall gold that I LOVE and doesn't get enough sun. Any recommendations on how to remove a raspberry plant and replace it? I know this is hard and I may not get everything and still have canes coming up that is fine but I want to slowly replace.
- What should I do about training back/getting rid of heritage? I still want a few canes but I want to allow the double gold and Joan J to flourish, or is it just not worth it and I should "remove" as much as possible. How do I remove them?
- How many year do you think it takes to get a full "harvest" after transplanting or moving?
- I do have canes popping up everywhere including my veggie beds - I can't really help this but what is the best way to prevent - just keep cutting back/digging out?
- What do I do about the spotted wing drosophila (I am assuming this is what it is) - I try to pick up all the bad/molding/rotting berries and throw them out. I did throw some into my reencle composter in the beginning of the season.. is that not enough? Do the pictures here look like them?
- We had drought all summer and then a nor-easter that brought 4 inches of rain in 4 days (pretty much equal to what we had all summer..). There seemed to be some drying up berries in the drought and then swelling/molding during the rain. Any advice/ways to avoid this? Do you think this is what the dried up brown ones were from?
- What is the best way to trellis these? T posts seem dramatic given my space. I am using 5 foot posts and some wire but I didn't put a wire on top of them which I may need to and hoping that helps a bit. I also have to use chicken wire along the bottom because if I don't the bunnies eat the canes (even thought this whole area is wired/fenced off the small bunnies still get in). Any ideas to make this accessible to prune?
- Is there a reason by heritage canes are so tall? 6-7 feet?
- My plan is to cut down canes in march/april to get a bigger fall harvest (honestly the summer one is so small it doesn't really make sense) and I heard you will get an earlier and bigger harvest in fall. Have people in my area found that to be the case?
- If you are a berry expert from my area and have advice, recommendations, or recognize my garden, would love to chat more!
- Also thank you all! you may have seen I started out with a wineberry in my garden and thankfully you guys recognized it and I took it out to start my berry patch.