How to grow kilos of raspberries
From just 7 canes in a teeny tiny space
This essay is part of the You Can Do This series where I share empowering and practical how to guides that will hopefully help you acquire a new lifelong skill.
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My berry dream
A few years ago I had a simple garden-related dream. My dream was to one day be able to pick fresh organic raspberries each morning to have with my granola. I love raspberries so very much. They are like jewels, coveted treasure with unsurpassed flavour.
In my small southwest London garden, I managed to fulfil that dream. I still pinch myself each morning during raspberry season as I gather the berries and inhale their exquisite aroma before tumbling them into my breakfast bowl. It is my deeply pleasurable daily summer ritual that I will never take for granted.
But in the past two years in particular, harvests have been big.
An embarrassment of berries
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been sharing a few raspberry growing updates on Notes. On the 27th July, I wrote:
“I don’t wish to alarm anyone but I'd like to report the following: in the past couple of days the raspberries have smashed through last year's total harvest of 4065g (9lbs) and are currently on 4400g (9.7lbs) with plenty more still to ripen. I can't quite believe it. I think it might reach 5kg (11lbs).
All this abundance from just 7 raspberry canes taking up a footprint of about 5ft by 3ft and 6ft tall, the size of a very small tree.
P.S. Would readers be interested in a raspberry growing guide? I think I'm now well versed on growing an abundance of raspberries in a very small space. I think much of the success is down to how and when I prune it and its position in the garden.”
Lots of you said you would love a guide on growing raspberries.
And dear reader, it is my pleasure and joy to report, the very last raspberry was picked just this morning and the grand total of this year’s raspberry harvest reached a truly abundantly spectacular 5.5kg (12lbs)!
I’ve been eating some fresh each day and the rest have gone straight into freezer bags to add to breakfasts throughout the rest of this year and well into the next. I can proudly say that I’m now pretty much self-sufficient in raspberries.
The value of this year’s harvest
My local community-owned organic fruit and veg farm, from where I get my weekly veg delivery, sell a 125g punnet of organic raspberries (the approximate amount I’ve been picking most days this season) for a whopping £5.25.
Based on this figure, I currently have around £210 worth of raspberries in my freezer.
So I think it’s about time I shared how I grow such a big berry bonanza in my very small urban garden.
In this post I cover the 5 tips that have resulted in an organic raspberry harvest of 5.5kg (12lbs) from just 7 canes, which includes variety, positioning, kitchen waste feeding, a special way of pruning and a tying in trick that maximises yield. Plus images.
Why grow raspberries at all?
For those of us with limited outside space, which is most of us lucky enough to have any outside space at all, it pays to be ruthlessly selective with what edibles we choose to grow.
For example, I wouldn’t bother growing onions because they don’t cost much to buy – even organic ones – and they require quite a lot of space for a good harvest. I also get through so many onions that I’d never be self-sufficient in them anyway.
For a crop to take up some of the very finite real estate on my patch, it must work hard.
Here are the reasons why I grow raspberries:
Expensive to buy
Yes, the prices at my community farm are higher than your average supermarket. But a 150g punnet of organic raspberries in Sainsbury’s is still £2.60. Plus, they are generally grown abroad.
Don’t travel well, at all
Ever bought a punnet only to find most of them are halfway to liquid? A ripe raspberry will disintegrate with little more than a hard stare, let alone traveling from Morocco to the UK on the back of a lorry or worse, on a plane.
Taste best freshly picked
Raspberries must be eaten perfectly ripe to truly appreciate just how amazing they are. There is a 1-2 day window for this — any later and you’re eating mush. And if you’ve never filled your lungs with the scent from a freshly picked bowlful, you’re missing out on one of life’s great pleasures.
Berry royalty
Raspberries are so delicious - they are my favourite soft fruit. I find them far superior in flavour to blueberries (which I also grow) and a warm and ripe strawberry is a lovely thing, but the tart dimension of the raspberry takes them to another level.
Very easy to grow
Growing raspberries requires minimal hands-on time. Maintenance of these perennial plants involves an annual prune and some tying in with twine. I don’t even water them, even in the height of summer. Once they’re established and happy, they seem to just get on with living their best life.
Freeze really well
My preferred way to store the bounty for delicious eating throughout the year.
Pollinators love them
Bumblebees and solitary bees are obsessed with raspberry flowers, more so than any other flower in the garden blooming at the same time. The unbridled joy I get from watching and hearing the bees gorge on the nectar is a second harvest, of the heart.
Big haul from a small space
This year I’ve grown 5.5kg (12lbs) from just 7 canes, taking up the space of a medium sized shrub or very small tree.
Like it wet
One of my favourite things about this crop. When everything else has failed because it’s been a cool and wet summer (common in the UK), the raspberries prevail. They in fact love these conditions — DYK Scotland is famous for producing some of the finest raspberries in the world?
Any other reason to grow raspberries?
You can make a herbal tea from raspberry leaves which has several benefits, including aiding digestive support, relieving menstrual cramping and relieving mouth ulcers and sore throats.
How I organically grow raspberries
And obtained a 5.5kg (12lbs) harvest from just 7 canes, in a tiny space
I didn’t immediately land at an abundance of berries, there has been a lot of trial and error and many failures over the years. I experimented with several different ways of growing raspberries and some completely tanked.
In gardening, everyone has their different methods. There’s a lot of well worn advice out there but there are few ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ways to do things. The ‘right’ way is whatever happens to work for you and your particular site.
It’s through this experimentation that I eventually arrived at 5 tips that ended up being the ‘right’ way for me — they’ve proven to work better than I could ever have imagined.
It’s these tips I share below. Perhaps some of them might work for your raspberry growing too.