What kind of frosts can raspberries tolerate in spring? Proper care of raspberries in spring. When to start carrying out spring activities to care for raspberries after winter: approximate dates

A good harvest is not a gift of fate, but the result of painstaking work, because even the most picky plants require regular care and will bear fruit poorly without it. This means we pull ourselves together and move forward to learning the basic rules for caring for berry bushes, namely everyone’s favorite raspberries.

Raspberries are one of the most useful plants. In folk medicine, both berries and leaves are used, which contain large amounts of vitamin C. At a minimum, every person knows one healing property - tea with raspberry jam against the first symptoms of a cold.

But to grow this “green pharmacy” in your garden you need to work hard. Caring for raspberries begins in mid-spring, when the snow has already melted.

Spring revision

First of all, you need to check how the plants overwintered. It often happens that frosts cause irreparable damage to your raspberries.

Next, you need to cut out all fruit-bearing shoots. As a rule, these cares need to be done in the fall - this is suitable for ordinary raspberry varieties. If you have late-fruiting raspberries, then pruning of the shoots occurs in the spring. Fruit-bearing shoots must be cut down to the very base. Also pay attention to old leaves - they need to be removed and burned, because... they can be infected with diseases and transfer them to healthy raspberries.

If in the fall you carried out work on bending and tying raspberry bushes for the winter, then in the spring they need to be untied and straightened, but do this after the snow has melted, advises Lyubov Alekseevna Popova, a member of the gardening club. – This is a mandatory procedure, because Due to frost, you may completely lose your raspberry harvest this year. This happens because the shoots are too close to the ground and under good weather conditions the buds may open. Any frost will negatively affect the shoots.

Garter and pruning shoots

After carrying out the procedures described above, start tying the raspberries to the trellis. The simplest trellis - 1) stakes are driven into the ground (if this is a long-term construction, the stakes can be reinforced with concrete for stability)
2) Next, a wire or twine is stretched between the stakes, to which the raspberries will be tied in the future.

After you have tied up the raspberries, you should take a break from caring for the raspberries until the buds open. As soon as you see that the buds have blossomed, you can start trimming the tops of the raspberries. The tops are pruned to the first blossoming bud, which helps the formation of side shoots.

Soil care

The soil around raspberries in spring also needs attention. There is no need to dig it up so as not to damage the roots, since they are not located deep in raspberries. It is enough to carry out light loosening to a depth of 5 - 10 cm. Then mulch the soil around the plants.

Raspberries are one of those shrubs that love moist and loose soil, notes Lyubov Mikhailovna Terentyeva, a member of the club of experienced gardeners, so you need to mulch it annually. To mulch raspberries, you can use rotted sawdust, peat or tops of root crops. Mulching the soil allows you to make the soil more suitable for growing raspberries - it becomes loose, retains moisture and is more fertile. But that's not all - the use of mulch helps improve temperature and air conditions, and also helps suppress the growth of weeds.

But mulching is not suitable for all types of soil. If your site has wet and dense soil, then it is better to simply loosen it and apply fertilizer.

Early spring is the best time to apply nitrogen fertilizers. You will get the best effect from applying urea along the entire row of plants, in a strip of 50-70 cm. After you have fertilized the soil, mulch it.

Raspberries are one of the most responsive crops to care. This rule also applies to the application of fertilizers - organic and mineral.

This can be seen in a simple example - high saturation of the soil with nitrogen fertilizers provokes the active growth of shoots. Don't forget to delete them, because... they can fill the entire area.

Disease prevention and pest control

In early spring, before the buds open, preventive treatment of raspberries and soil with 3% Bordeaux mixture is carried out, which contributes to the best fight against pathogens.

To prevent diseases and infections, raspberries are treated against pests 4 times per season:

The first treatment is carried out in early spring - as we discussed above;
The second treatment is carried out before flowering;
Next after flowering;
The last one after harvest.

To combat pests (insects or mites), both chemical preparations and folk remedies - infusions and decoctions of herbs - are suitable.

Insecticides are chemicals that help get rid of pests as quickly as possible. They can be purchased at any store.

Remember that spring care procedures for raspberries will help you reap a good harvest and help the plant develop immunity to various infections and diseases.

Prepared by Malvina Ermolaeva.

On a note

To get a harvest of excellent quality, experienced gardeners advise treating raspberry bushes with nitrafen before budding, and spraying them with karbofos a week before flowering.

It was possible to get several harvests from raspberries during the year even 100 years ago. However, the gardeners were not pleased with the yield and scrupulous breeding work continued. Currently, lovers of berry crops have the opportunity to grow remontant raspberries with excellent varietal characteristics on their plots. The harvests have become more abundant, the berries are larger, and the bushes are more resistant to diseases and pests. Follow agricultural practices and you will always have berries. But there are problems with this question. Spring is the most important period for growing remontant raspberries. Proper care at this time of year will allow plants to grow faster and lay the foundation for a future harvest. Let's figure out together how to properly carry out spring planting, pruning, feeding bushes, treating the plant against diseases and pests, and also preparing seedlings and cuttings for propagation.

General rules for caring for remontant raspberries in spring

The main difference between remontant raspberries and regular garden raspberries is the ability to produce two harvests per season. On two-year-old branches of a remontant bush, the berries ripen in the summer at the same time as in summer varieties. After this, annual shoots begin to bloom and form fruits, which will bear fruit until late autumn.

The first measures of spring care are removing the winter cover and feeding the bushes, taking into account the fact that the raspberries will have to bear fruit twice. Also, at the very beginning of the season, it is necessary to carry out formative and sanitary pruning, and tie the branches to the trellis wires.

When to remove the shelter and tie it to the trellis?

The winter shelter from the raspberry tree is removed immediately after the sun begins to warm up. There is no need to delay this event. The bushes may begin to rot, the intensive development of fungal diseases and the proliferation of insects on the awakening buds will begin.

Experienced gardeners wait until the temperature reaches zero at night and rises to +2-5℃ during the day. The branches have not yet unbent, only exposing the soil. The shelter is left next to the bushes in order to be able to re-cover the stems during night frosts. The main thing is that the soil begins to warm up as early as possible, creating conditions for feeding the roots.

If remontant raspberries are pruned completely in the fall, then most often they are protected from frost only with mulch. In this case, there is no need to remove the shelter. Mulch will protect the soil from drying out, and when it rots, it will become a source of nutrients.

During this period, fine-drop spraying can be practiced so that the plants can better withstand spring frosts. When above-zero night temperatures are reached, the shelter is finally removed, the shoots are straightened and tied to the trellises.

Watering

Most of all, raspberries need moisture during the period of flowering, setting and ripening of fruits. If the plant lacks water at this time, the yield will decrease several times.

In early spring, remontant raspberries have enough moisture, which entered the soil when the snow melted. The raspberries will need to be watered only towards the end of spring, and then only if dry, hot weather sets in. Watering is carried out at the root, in the evening or morning. The most optimal system is considered to be a drip irrigation system. The soil will always be moist enough, but not to the point where disease will develop.

Feeding

If fertilizers were applied to the holes during planting, then the first feeding will be needed only in the second or third year of the bush’s life. In early spring, the plant must be fed with nitrogen. If it is missing, growth will slow down and the leaves will turn yellow. Nitrogen fertilizers will allow the bushes to grow green mass faster. Powerful bushes will form more fruit branches, both yields of remontant raspberries will be higher.0

Organic matter will saturate raspberries with nutrients and improve the soil structure. Before the buds begin to bloom, add diluted mullein (1:10) or chicken manure (1:20). For 1 sq.m. 5 liters is enough. solution. The procedure is repeated before flowering.

In early spring, the following should be applied to the bush: nitroammophoska (60 g per m2), urea (30 g per m2), ammonium nitrate (40 g per m2).

In the second half of May, to improve the quality of fruits (ripening and sugar content), phosphorus-potassium fertilizing is done. Crystalon (5 g per 5 l) is suitable as a foliar feeding.

Treatment against diseases and pests

Remontant raspberries have good immunity to diseases and are almost not attacked by pests. But a long, wet, cold spring can trigger the development of fungus on the root system.

Towards mid-spring, when the ambient temperature rises to +15 ℃, the raspberry plant is treated with a 3% solution of Bordeaux mixture. Before flowering, the bush is sprayed with a solution of Topaz (1 ml per 5 liters of water)

In case of raspberry moth infestation, lime milk (0.5 kg of lime per 5 liters of water) will help.

The bush should be sprayed against aphids before flowering with Fitoverm or Nitrafen.

Pruning remontant raspberries in spring for beginners

The pruning technology depends on what you want to get: one full harvest by the end of summer, or two harvests: summer and autumn.

Deadlines

It is recommended to start pruning raspberries in the spring, after removing the cover. In regions with mild winters, pruning raspberries in the fall provokes the germination of underground buds. And this is undesirable in winter. Spring pruning does not have these problems.

Raspberry shoots not removed in the fall will help insulate the roots of the plant, therefore, in cold regions, early spring pruning is preferable.

Scheme

Pruning remontant raspberries in the spring using the method of obtaining two harvests is as follows:

Sanitary pruning is carried out immediately after removing the cover. All unnecessary, diseased, weak branches are removed. The top of the head is trimmed to no more than 10-15 cm.
In May, young shoots will begin to grow intensively. If there are a lot of them, thinning is carried out. The remaining annual shoots, when they reach a height of 1 meter, are pinned so that they produce more lateral fruit branches.
At the end of July, after the two-year-old branches bear fruit, they are cut off at ground level.

If remontant raspberries are grown in regions where the second crop does not ripen, or the gardener wants to get not extended fruiting, but one, but a good harvest of raspberries from annual shoots, the pruning scheme is chosen as follows:

in early spring, cut out all last year's shoots at the root (if this is not done in the fall);
in May, young branches are thinned out, leaving 25-30 cm between shoots;
When the shoot reaches a height of 1 meter, it is pinned

Thickening of raspberries provokes the development of fungal diseases, and the quality of the crop decreases. Therefore, thinning the raspberry tree cannot be ignored.

Spring planting of remontant raspberries

With a closed root system in peat pots, remontant raspberries can be planted from early spring until late autumn. With an open root system, planting is carried out only in autumn or spring. In the second case there are a number of advantages.

Benefits of spring planting

In spring, planting raspberries provides the following benefits:

there is no danger that autumn frosts will not allow seedlings to take root;
the plant will gain strength throughout the season for subsequent wintering;
the opportunity to get the first harvest already in the current season.

Spring planting is especially relevant for gardening plots in temperate latitudes.

Selection and preparation of a site

When choosing a place for remontant raspberry varieties, you should remember that long-term fruiting requires improved soil composition, the possibility of watering, and good illumination of the area.

Wetlands exposed to drafts are not suitable. In the south, raspberries need partial shade. Acidic soil is improved with lime, ash, and dolomite flour. Ideally, a year before planting the raspberry tree, mustard, rapeseed or oats were planted on the site.

Requirements for seedlings

Strong seedlings have a shoot at the base with a diameter of 5-8 mm. The root should be 15-20 cm long, maybe less, the main thing is that there are a lot of elastic fibrous roots.

A day before planting, the roots of the seedlings are soaked in any root formation stimulant, for example, in rhizome. Before planting, the “beard” is dipped in mash, which consists of mullein and clay in equal proportions.

Landing technology

For the best illumination, planting in clumps of 2-3 bushes at a distance of 0.5 m from each other is justified. When planting in rows, leave 60-80 cm between bushes and 2-2.5 m between rows.

For 1 sq. m of raspberry bush add 3 buckets of humus, a bucket of peat and 0.5 buckets of ash.

The planting depth is maintained at the level at which the plant grew in its original location. After planting, you need to pour at least a bucket of water under each bush.

Propagation by cuttings

The easiest way to propagate remontant raspberries is by cuttings. The second-year shoots that bear fruit are cut off in the fall and divided into cuttings with 1-2 buds, 12-20 cm long. They are planted in the ground, compacted and covered with a jar (film). For the winter they are covered with agrofibre. In spring, the cuttings take root and produce leaves. If they are planted densely, the seedlings are transplanted.

Practice has shown that it is much easier to grow remontant raspberries, getting a harvest only from annual shoots. But with any growing method, the plant requires fertile soil, a sunny area and watering during the dry season.

Many gardeners know how to care for a variety of crops. Their raspberry bushes grow in their dacha and bear fruit abundantly. It's hard to find a person who doesn't love gardening. Interesting for gardeners is caring for raspberries in the spring; this is part of the important spring work carried out in the gardens. Raspberries not only look beautiful and add aesthetic value to the garden, their fruits are medicinal and have been used in folk medicine for a long time. This berry is a source of various savings for the winter. With the onset of summer, the harvest can be harvested, and it is used to make jam, compotes and add to various dishes in winter.

What care does raspberry need?

This bushy plant reproduces well, producing its first shoots in early spring. Raspberries are a biennial plant; a new shoot grows in the first year, and it begins to bear fruit only in the second year.

Important! There is a special variety that can bear fruit in the first year after germination. Such raspberries are called remontant. Caring for remontant raspberries has its own characteristics.

If the shoots were tied to the ground in the fall, then with the onset of spring they must be untied so that the new swollen buds are not damaged by sudden frosts, which often occur in the spring. To avoid trampling of the soil, gardeners use special boards or use paths trodden between the bushes.

Planting raspberries in spring requires attention and certain knowledge. To ensure that the bush grows evenly, it is planted in even rows. There should be a distance of approximately 2 meters between the rows. The distance between bushes in rows should be 70 centimeters.

Shrub pruning

After the snow has melted and work has begun on the dacha plot, it is necessary to inspect the raspberry bush. The word “revision” means walking around the entire bush and reviewing its external condition.

Dried shoots need to be cut off in the spring to allow new shoots to grow. Pruning raspberries in spring is one of the main stages of care. New stems that grew in the fall may have been frozen during the winter. Gardeners tie the stems to the ground for the winter; if this is not done, the tops will freeze, they must be removed, they will not bear fruit and develop further.

When all the dead shoots have been pruned, you need to clear the raspberry tree of autumn leaves and other branches. This must be done so that a variety of fungi, insects and other pests cannot live and reproduce in this environment.

In spring, fragile and thin shoots need to be pruned to make room for healthy and woody stems. The yield will be significantly reduced if thick growth is left. The stems are cut at a height of 1 meter from the ground.

Fertilizer and feeding of raspberries

When the first snow has melted, it is necessary to apply fertilizer to the soil under the raspberry tree. Feeding raspberries in the spring is an important step in caring for the bush. The best nitrogen fertilizers are saltpeter, or urea.

Important! To prevent the soil from acquiring significant acidity, which raspberries do not like, it is recommended to pour ash under each bush; it can neutralize the acidity.

droppings of poultry, goats, or rabbits. Fertilizers are diluted 1 to 20 times with water;
cow manure, which is diluted 1 to 10 with water;
nettle and comfrey, which are poured with hot water and prepared for a week, mixing thoroughly.

The advice of experienced gardeners boils down to the fact that the best fertilizer for raspberry bushes is considered to be organic “chatter”, it consists of cow droppings and nitrate.

Working with the soil around the bushes

After applying fertilizers, you need to loosen and fluff the soil under the raspberry bushes. In order not to damage the raspberry roots, which grow rather shallowly and grow in different directions, the soil should be loosened to a depth of no more than 10 cm. To prevent the bushes from growing in different directions, the raspberry bush must be fenced.

Watering and its features

Raspberries are a fairly stable crop that does not need watering, both in summer and spring, only in cases of severe drought. But in the autumn, shrubs need to be watered because new growth points of stems and shoots begin to form.

Pest danger and protection against them

Raspberry bushes are damaged not only by insects and worms, but also by fungal and viral diseases that get along well with this crop. When treating with insecticides, as well as other chemicals, it is imperative to observe the spraying time, which occurs during the growing season, so as not to harm the bushes. Gardeners recommend treating buds with chemicals only before they open.

There are substances that help fight various pests, for example:

Bordeaux mixture has a detrimental effect on almost all pests;
nitrafen solution allows you to cope with the raspberry beetle that appears immediately after the snow clears;
Fufanon solution destroys gall midge larvae;
To prevent flies and their larvae that have overwintered in the raspberry wood from getting out, the raspberry stems are treated with a layer of mulching solution.

There are several points, by adhering to them, gardeners will receive a rich harvest:

observe the specifics of watering;
feed raspberries with organic fertilizers;
monitor the condition of the soil and loosen it;
protect against harmful viruses, insects, and other organisms.

If all these conditions are met, then in one season you can collect up to 4 kg of berries from one raspberry bush.

It should be noted that there are special varieties of raspberries, care for them in the spring is important, namely remontant ones, they have a yield significantly higher than simple raspberry bushes. The high yield is explained by the fact that raspberries can produce two harvests in one season. Gardeners claim that one bush produces up to 10 kg of berries during the season. There are several advantages that make the yield of remontant varieties an order of magnitude higher than ordinary ones:

instead of one harvest per season, the gardener receives two, fruiting is much higher;
for the winter the shoots do not need to be bent, they are erect;
the shoots do not need to be tied up, since their height is approximately 160 cm;
quite simple care and cleaning, which boils down to the fact that in the autumn the dried stems are simply removed from the soil, thereby removing pests and various plant diseases;
This type of raspberry is quite resistant to various diseases and pests.

There are many varieties and varieties of raspberries, each with different fruit size, taste, stem type and appearance, but these varieties require special care and attention.

If you follow all the tips and adhere to all the recommendations outlined in this article, then the raspberry bush will be healthy and the harvest will be large.

Most raspberry varieties do not have good winter hardiness. Despite the fact that breeders have managed to adapt some varieties to very significant drops in temperature, raspberries often need protection from freezing. To preserve berry bushes, it is important to properly prepare raspberries for winter. If you follow all the basic recommendations, then the next season will certainly please you with a bountiful harvest.

Why do raspberries freeze?

The winter hardiness indicators of raspberries are directly dependent on the timely stop of shoot growth and their development. The ripening of wood must stop in time. If the autumn warmth is quite long, then the raspberry bushes will go into winter without having time to form their shoots completely and without shedding their leaves entirely. It is these shoots that often freeze out and die quite quickly.

Damage to flower buds may also be observed in the middle and upper lobes of berry bushes. The tops usually die due to their immaturity, and the shoots located in the middle parts die due to insufficient protection by snow cover.

Preparing raspberry bushes for winter

As a rule, experienced gardeners begin preparing their plots for winter in July. During this period, it is important to completely stop applying nitrogen-containing fertilizers to raspberry bushes. And they begin to prepare them to reduce such feeding at the very beginning of summer. This is necessary so that the raspberry bushes can cope with the difficult test of frost without damaging the future harvest. That is, it is extremely undesirable to overfeed raspberry plantings with nitrogen.

If manure acts as mulch, then it should be placed on the beds until mid-June, no later. If any other material is used as mulch, and manure is used exclusively in the form of diluted liquid fertilizer, then it is stopped applied towards the end of July.

With the onset of September, the tops of the shoots begin to be pinched - this can be done simultaneously with cutting out the fruit-bearing stems. Despite the fact that this procedure does not provide for the possibility of secondary growth, the raspberry bushes will be able to stock up on all the elements they require for a safe winter.

By about mid-September, it is necessary to get rid of the apical parts of the shoots, because in any case they are unlikely to survive the winter. And you shouldn’t count on their secondary growth either. Trimming the tops is useful because it allows the raspberries to accumulate a sufficient amount of various nutrients by winter. It is recommended to shorten the shoots by no more than ten centimeters, but not less than five. Most often, the limit is considered to be the first fully developed kidney.

Also, in the fall, excess shoots should be trimmed. Moreover, such shoots are always cut off strictly at the root. Some gardeners sometimes leave several of these shoots as reserves - they can be useful in case of particularly severe damage to raspberry bushes in winter. The raspberry rows are carefully loosened, while adding fertilizing with a tablespoon of superphosphate and two tablespoons of potassium sulfate. In principle, this combination can be replaced with ordinary ash - in this case, two glasses of ash are added for each square meter.

In mid-October, raspberry bushes are earthed up - earthing up will help prevent the vulnerable root system from freezing. And after the mulching is completed, the berry bushes are bent to the ground and secured in this position. However, even such a procedure is not always able to reliably protect raspberry shoots from freezing. In this situation, frozen shoots are shortened again in the spring. If there is slight freezing, only their shrunken tops are cut off. If the freezing is quite serious, then you still shouldn’t rush to cut out the entire shoots - even if their upper parts are frozen completely, the living buds located just below are in any case capable of producing at least a small harvest.

In winter, raspberry bushes bent to the ground need to be provided with constant access to air, piercing the ice crusts as they form. It is also important to ensure that the raspberries are well covered with snow - in winters with little snow, additional snow is added to the bent bushes so that they are completely covered with it. Only in this case can we talk about reliable protection against freezing.