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I'll plant 10 raspberry bushes next to my fence, which gets great sun. The only variables I'll set up are how much sun each gets (on the end there's less than at the start) and how big the holes I dig are. Later I can do experiments in pruning, fertilizer, nets, etc. I'll use the varieties that that local garden center has on sale ($4 each) and I'll use a mixture of our home compost (really rich stuff) mixed 1/2 and 1/2 with some good stuff in bags. |
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How many will thrive, and how many produce fruit, and how soon. Of course I'd love a huge crop of luscious, big, tasty berries! |
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I'll give it a year, which should take me through two growing seasons (if I understand correctly). |
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I'll allow myself to be a bit sloppy regarding developing my expertise and doing this just right. Getting rid of perfectionism in such as new area for me (I have no idea what color my thumb is) will help enjoy the ride. Watching the plants develop will be exciting, as will the first time they produce fruit. I'll also monitor how much I like gardening like this, esp. the maintenance. |
Create an Experiment
Matthew Cornell
- Member Since
- 07/02/09
- About Lover of experimentation and leader of Think, Try, Learn, the scientific method for discovering happiness. Creator of Edison, the Think, Try, Learn experimenter's workbook. http://edison.thinktrylearn.com/ http://www.thinktrylearn.com/ http://www.matthewcornell.org/
- Web http://www.matthewcornell.org/
- Experiments 98
- Observations 1262
Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell Planted as of yesterday! pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewcornell/4849829460/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewcornell/4849829130/ . Specifically: Raspberry varieties from right to left, facing west with beds behind:
1 prelude
2 Anne yellow
3 Hilton?
4 Hilton
5 nova
6 nova
7 nova
8 himbo
9 himbo
10 (by fence abutting alley) himbo
o 10 has the biggest hole by far. Aldo the richest mix, I think
o 1 has a pretty big hole too
o 2 and most others have holes with diameters only a few inches wider, so not much mix on the sides.
o 1 gets the most sun, with progressively less down to 10
o 2 looks least healthy right now- smaller, yellower, leans more
Aug 01, 2010
Matthew Cornell I'll be watering them daily for the next two weeks. Curious to see how they fare!
Aug 01, 2010
Matthew Cornell They all look pretty good, with #2 being smaller and less healthy. Tall green, and even a few berries ripening. However, there's some kind of bug chewing on the lower leaves, and they are yellow and shriveling. I'm surprised by this - I naively assumed that there would be no bug interest! Time for a trip to the garden store.
Aug 19, 2010
Matthew Cornell We've had a drought here, and it's not surprising that I lost #8. Let's have a moment of silence. I've been watering them from our big rain barrel, so the others are looking pretty good. We have a few Japanese Beetles munching on leaves, but I'll use my wife's technique of plucking them off and dropping them into soapy water. They've produced a handful of berries so far, but something seems to be causing small parts of some berries to die. It's really exciting to see a bright red berry, pluck it, and enjoy it.
Sep 02, 2010
Matthew Cornell Update: The plants are healthy, with new green leaves coming out. Three of them are producing a tiny bit of fruit (maybe a dozen berries) but I'm wildly optimistic :-) It's coming time for me to learn more about the two-phase growth pattern, pruning, canes, etc.
Sep 29, 2010
Matthew Cornell They're all looking good. The ants seem to like one of them, and eat the berries. I"ll let it go for now. Also, I need to research the growing seasons. I'd like to know what they do in the winter here.
Oct 10, 2010
Matthew Cornell I haven't done a thing to prepare them for winter, mostly because life's been busy. I found this article on pruning - http://gardening.about.com/od/berries/a/Prune_Raspberry.htm - and so as a minimum I'll go out and prune the canes with grayish, peeling bark down to the ground.
Dec 26, 2010
Rofellos Raspberries are great! I planted 3 of them 2 summers ago but sadly haven't taken care of them much (except for digging out crawlers) interested to see what you do with them in the future.
Dec 26, 2010
Matthew Cornell Thanks, Rofellos. How is your harvest each year? I'd love a effort/results 80-20 dynamic if possible. Put in the 20% most important work, get a lot of results. Maybe these don't work that way.
Dec 27, 2010
Matthew Cornell I went ahead and pruned the canes that produced fruit this year. The canes were not old-looking, so I was nervous. I decided to cut them back three different heights as an experiment. Some to the ground, some down to one foot from the ground, and some merely trimmed the small growths off the main branches. The cut parts were green, which was unsettling. I'll record which specific plants got which treatment soon. We will see come spring!
Dec 31, 2010
Matthew Cornell Spring is here, and it's time to see how the experiment is going. I'm happy to report lots of little green leaves on all plants, both on the canes and coming up from the ground around them. Status, where 3 = excellent growth and 0 = dead: 3 3 2 1 2 1 2 0 1 1. I'm surprised that the first two are doing so much better than the rest. My wife thinks it's because the soil is better on that end, which I tried to ameliorate with consistent potting mixture when I planted them. A surprise, then. Re pruning, I decided to take the "something is better than nothing" approach and cut off at the bottom all brown canes with no growth. I also cut off ends of canes with growth above the highest little shoot. Next I'll get some all-purpose fertilizer (16-16-8, 10-10-10, or 20-20-20), which is recommended by one site for the first year. Dare I dream of tasty berries this year?
Apr 20, 2011
Matthew Cornell A long overdue update: For the last month or two the bushes on the whole have been producing a handful of berries each day. Though I'd like for the harvest to be greater, picking and eating them it the highlight of each day. Hugely satisfying :-) A surprise from this long-running experiment is that each bush is producing far different amounts compared to the others. Also surprising is that the ants go to town on them. Finally, it's surprising that some have berries that are very green/early, and that they don't look like they'll ever ripen. My questions now are, Will those eventually ripen before the end of the season? How will next year's harvest compare to this year? My hope is that it will be better. If any don't produce next year, I'll take them down.
Sep 23, 2011
Matthew Cornell Not sure exactly what to prune now that it's late fall, so I'll prune back almost everything, except for a few canes that still have green leaves, but did not bear fruit. My question: Which canes will bear fruit next season. I should probably learn more, but - itself an experiment - I will be a little sloppy in this one thing. ;-)
Nov 20, 2011