Got nothing here, major kill back this year with no snow cover, see a couple of plants from the bottom. Hope its a long summer. C

Do you mean flower buds or leaf buds? My raspberries are just starting to develop flower buds now. Reds and yellows stayed alive pretty much to their tips, the Wyoming black died back to about half their cane length (but they have long canes, so that's okay.)

Here's my Boyne (red) raspberries, as of about 5 minutes ago...

leaves :( I just went and checked again it looks like I have one survivor

Mine are leafing out, but aren't as far along as Don's. Most of my stuff looks like it survived to the tip, but it does get a lot of snow cover.

That sucks if you grazed it with roundup, but don't beat yourself up...I've done that before!

CLB, when I look at your photo, the 2 dead canes look like they fruited last year (I see some dead flowers/fruits). If that's the case, they would normally die after fruiting and be removed last fall. It is whatever new canes were put up last year that would then be your fruiting canes this year, in this case the cane that it leafing out.

I suspect that by moving the canes last year you disrupted the setting of new canes so your fruit production may be very low this year. But your other raspberry plants may still be alive, it may just be that they didn't get a chance to grow new canes last summer. If so, and the roots are still alive, they should put up new canes within a few weeks. So don't rip them out yet, maybe wait to see what happens.

One other thing, the raspberries would probably be happier if they were in their own bed and not competing so directly with lawn grass.

Thanks Don I will wait and hope then. I did move them near the end of the season I thought I kept enough dirt around them to keep the roots in tact. As for their own bed I don't think this will happen the grass will keep growing back. I have seen fields of Raspberries grown with grass up to them so they can mow between the rows not sure if our harsher climate would make this practice bad. I was hoping to have them go along the whole fence eventually with the grass for easy up keep.

Pic stolen from the net but similar to the farms in Abbotsford

You can definitely grow them with grass here too, I see them escaping from people's yards into grassy parks and forming patches there. Just saying that less competition makes for happier berries, but whatever works for you.

I hope it works LOL I seem to kill everything I get. We decided last night not to replace the fruit trees that don't make it I can't afford to buy new trees every 3 years and not get something from them. Normally raspberries grow well for me. Fruit trees have always been a problem except when we lived in Kamloops.

About the bleeding heart: I'd keep an eye out for it. I once thought I killed one when I moved it because it didn't come up in the spring when another one in our yard did. It finally did come up, though, sometime in mid- to late June. So I would say you still have a chance there.

Thanks Violet I am needing hope right now. Maybe all my plants are holding out for some sort of surprise party.

Finally some good news my peony is alive............YIPPEE!!

This post was edited by CLBlakey on Thu, May 30, 13 at 20:06

My gosh Don, I can't believe how far along your Boyne are!
I'm at the edge of zones 3 and 4 in north/central MN, and my Boyne are at least a week behind yours. Do yours get extra protection?

One thing that I did notice today.... Some of my upper cane tips are just starting to leaf bud now. I had thought those tips were dead. I pays not to trim expected dead cane tips too soon.

Northernmn, that's strange, because mine are actually in kind of a crappy spot. The sun is on the other side of the fence in the pic above, the raspberries are on the north-facing side of the fence. I planted them there because water tended to accumulate along the north-facing side of the fence and I wanted something to suck up the moisture and dry the soil up a bit. Raspberries did the trick well, and provide a bounty of berries as well!

It was a very long winter here and a very cold April, but May has been above normal temps, so maybe that's what helped the raspberries along?

Thanks for the water tip Don now I know I have them in the right spot now to get me some new roots to replace the round up ones.