Raspberry

Family

Rosaceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

1.8 m

Spread

1.5 m

Growth

medium

Lifespan

10 years

First yield

after 2 years

Full yield

after 3 years

Productive years

7 years

Yield per plant

up to 3 kg a year

Yield in cultivation

up to 5 t/ha

Energy yield

250 kcal per m² a year

Hardiness

zone 4–8

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

dry – very wet

pH

5.5 – 6.5

Synonyms

Himbeeren

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: The purple-red, finely hairy aggregate fruits ripen from July onwards a few at a time rather than all at once, which spreads the picking over weeks. They come away easily from the conical receptacle and are therefore hollow — exactly what distinguishes them from the blackberry, where the plug stays inside the fruit. With some seven per cent sugar plus fruit acids, pectins, flavones and vitamins C, B1 and B2 they are an aromatic fruit in the fullest sense: excellent fresh, good for freezing and versatile in the kitchen, going into preserves, syrup, cordial, tart fillings, ice cream, fruit puddings, liqueur, wine and framboise spirit. Fresh, however, they keep only a few days even chilled. Young leaves dried make a herbal tea, classically blended with bramble and strawberry leaf, lime blossom and woodruff. The young, still soft basal shoots of March and April are edible too — peeled and gently cooked they make a tender spring vegetable.

Medicinal: Antiemitic. Leaves and roots have anti-inflammatory, astringent, decongestant, eye-healing, labor-inducing, and stimulating properties. A tea made from them is used to treat diarrhea, strengthen the uterus in pregnant women, assist in childbirth, and alleviate painful menstrual symptoms. The active ingredients stimulate and relax the uterus. They can be used in the last three months of pregnancy and during labor but not earlier. Externally, leaves and roots are used as a gargle for tonsillitis and mouth inflammations, as a compress and wash for wounds, conjunctivitis, minor injuries, burns, and varicose veins. Leaves are harvested in summer and dried for later use. The fruits have anti-scorbutic and diuretic effects. Fresh raspberry juice, mixed with honey, makes an excellent cooling drink for fever. As a syrup, it is believed to have a soothing effect on the heart.

Other uses: Beyond its fruit the raspberry is above all a landscape shrub. Its shallow, far-spreading roots and dense suckering make it a proven means of greening and stabilising sunny to half-shaded banks and slopes; on clear-fells and scree it takes on that role unaided as a first coloniser. In little-used parts of the garden, including half shade under trees, it can simply be left to naturalise — that costs no maintenance and creates cover and food for birds and small mammals. As bee forage and a butterfly food plant it is among the most valuable woody plants that will fit into a domestic garden at all.

Raspberries want nutrient-rich, humus-rich soil that does not dry out, with a pH between 5.5 and 6.5 — on strongly calcareous ground they respond with chlorosis from iron and manganese deficiency. Waterlogging is the commonest cultural mistake and brings root rot with it. The site should be sunny to half-shaded and sheltered from wind. A distinction is drawn between summer raspberries, which fruit on the previous year's wood, and primocane (autumn) varieties, which fruit on the current season's canes and can therefore be cut right down in winter. Training systems include hedge, V and post systems, with wire mesh for autumn varieties; 2 to 3 m between rows and 0.4 to 0.6 m within the row are usual, giving 100 to 130 kg per 100 m². Wild raspberries often carry viruses and do not belong next to commercial plantings. One correction worth stressing: raspberries need air movement, not shelter. In still, enclosed corners the foliage and canes stay wet after dew and rain. An open, well-ventilated position, wide row spacing and consistent thinning to eight to twelve canes per running metre therefore work better than any spray. Only harsh, constant wind does damage by chafing the canes; in that case a loose, permeable windbreak set some distance away beats a solid wall right beside the row. Susceptible to: powdery and downy mildew (coating and leaf spots in stagnant air), cane blight (canes dying back after wet winters), botrytis (grey mould on ripening fruit), raspberry beetle (grubs in the fruit).

The raspberry all but propagates itself: suckers come up continuously from the shallow root system, and the simplest and by far commonest method is to lift them in autumn or early spring with a piece of root attached and replant them straight away. Root cuttings work just as well — in winter, lay pencil-thick root sections about ten centimetres long horizontally in seed compost — as do softwood cuttings from young shoots in early summer. When lifting suckers it pays to look at the parent stand: pass on only visibly healthy, vigorous plants, because raspberries transmit viruses to their offspring reliably. Raising from seed is left to breeders.

Among native soft fruits the raspberry is the ecological heavyweight. Around 48 wild bee species have been recorded at its flowers, and because it blooms from late May into July with the canes of a stand opening in succession, it supplies nectar and pollen reliably for weeks. Its value as larval food is more striking still: some 89 moth and butterfly species feed on the leaves and shoots, nine of them exclusively on Rubus. About 39 bird species take the fruit, as do many small mammals, and the dense, bristly cane thicket gives them cover and nesting space at the same time. Letting a corner of the garden run wild with it creates more habitat than almost any other fruit crop.

Raspberry is a pioneer species in the strict sense: on clear-cuts, windthrow areas and scree it is among the first colonisers, spreading by underground runners into dense thickets within a few seasons. That same habit makes it an effective means of stabilising soil on slopes and embankments. Botanically it is a pseudo-shrub: the rhizome is perennial while the upright canes are biennial — they grow in the first year, fruit in the second and then die back, which dictates how the plant is pruned. The small white nodding flowers are hermaphrodite and self-fertile, though insect visits markedly improve fruit set. The wild form ranges from the lowlands up to roughly 1,850 metres, and raspberries have demonstrably been gathered since the Bronze Age.

Europe, northern Asia and North America. The wild forms of the raspberry are at home across the temperate northern hemisphere, growing along woodland edges, in clearings and at altitude — from the lowlands to around 1,850 m. In Europe the range runs from Iceland and Scandinavia in the north to Spain and Italy in the south and continues eastwards through Siberia. It came into cultivation comparatively late: medieval monasteries grew it first, and only in the 18th and 19th centuries did it spread as a garden fruit across the whole northern hemisphere.

The raspberry is a plant of the clearing. It colonises clear-fells, windthrow sites, forest tracks, scree slopes and woodland edges — places where the canopy has been torn open and plenty of light reaches the ground for a few years. It needs nutrient-rich soil that does not dry out, in the distinctly acid range between pH 5.5 and 6.5; strongly calcareous sites do not suit it and bring on chlorosis. Waterlogging is equally unwelcome and quickly leads to root rot. Its shallow, far-reaching root system copes with being covered by drifting soil and makes it the classic first coloniser of disturbed woodland ground. Wind is its weak point — the canes break easily.