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wild raspberries not producing

15 years ago

Hi we have wild raspberry or blackberry bushes. By boyfriend burns every spring and winter, although I have not allowed it the past two years. Still, they will not flower or fruit. I think, should I just mow them down, should I rip them out by the roots and start over? All of the wild ones along the roadsides do great. Should I just go along roadsides to pick my berries or keep trying at home? Thank you.

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Comments (2)

petzold6596
15 years ago
The more sun they get the better. Check the amount of sun light they get (at least 6 hrs.) each day.
jemdandy
15 years ago
Burning could be your problem. Raspberries and blackberries set fruit on year old wood. A green stem grows the first year, and blossoms form on it the following year. After fruiting, the stem may die.

Wild berries are left to their own devices and are never pruned. Examine a wild backberry clump during its flowering season. Tou'll find the viable stem with flowers, and the beginnings of new stems low to the ground plus dead stems. There won't be as many dead stems as one might think since many of these have already broken down.

What I suggest you do if you want to tidy up. Remove the dead stems after fruiting and pile for burning. Let the rest alone. Don't remove apparently 'dead' stems in the winter; Its hard to tell dead wood from dormant wood. The dormant wood will green up in spring and become the fruit bearing stems.

Both blackberries and raspberries require full sun most of the day. Hike a pasture infested with wild blackberries and note where they do do best. Duplicate these conditions in your cultivated garden. You'll find berries growing along small creeks and drainways, and some distance away from the margins of forested plots. Imagine the shadow line of the trees and take note how deeply inside this shaded perimenter the wild stems grow. This tells you the sun requirements. I have seen blackberries growing with small shrubs and scrub brush, but never within the full shade of a forest.

Blackberries will tend toward low ground where there is more moisture during the heat of summer.

A wild raspberry clump spreads by forming new plantlets. After the berries have matured, a number of green stems rapidly increase in length and bends to touch their tips to the ground. Left undisturbed, these stems will form new roots at these points of contact and a new cloned plant will start. After a few season of this, the clump will have increased in diamenter into an impenetratable mass filled with old stem loops fastened at both ends to the ground - a home a rabbit could love.
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Raspberries, black or red, are largely self-pollinating. Extreme weather temperatures or wetness during bloom, or diseases can affect the fruit set percentage. Can't tell from the photo if those are dried-up berries or dried stamen clusters. The one berry with a few drupelets is poorly formed and looks like incomplete pollination.
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There is no reason not to move them and give them a try, but with how cheap you can find raspberry plants on craigslist, I would do both. As a matter of fact, I am doing both. I just bought a new place and I have a number of wild raspberry plants growing along the edge of the woods. I also bought 45 raspberry plants (15 of 3 different varieties) for $45 off craigslist. So, I now have 4 zones, the 3 from craigs + the group of wild ones I relocated.
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I think that cutting the whole patch to the ground every few years will generally improve the yield of berries. Old patches of blackberries or raspberries become thick with dead canes, other plants, etc., and the shade and competition seems to reduce the berry yield. The best wild berry patches I have seen are in places like roadsides or powerline cuts that are occasionally cut to the ground. Cutting also greatly improves access into the patch. So I would, in the fall or winter, mow a portion of your blackberries and raspberries to the ground each year. I might advise 20% each year, so that it takes you five years to do them all, and each area gets cut every five years. This may reduce the yield of berries the first year, but certainly will not kill any berry bushes and I think will improve yield and your ability to pick the berries. After about five years I think you'll find it is time to cut again. Here in PA we have about three types of useful brambles. We have one common type of wild blackberry that is a very common and vigorous grower with nasty thorns. The wild Black Raspberry has purplish canes with a whitish blush on them and, once you know what it looks like, is readily identified all year round. It is also quite common and the berries are dark purple when ripe. The third edible bramble is red raspberry, which is a smaller plant that bears red berries earlier than the others. The berries are tasty, but can be hard to find in good supply. There are lots of other species in the same genus Rubus but I haven't found any others to be really much good to eat and common enough in PA to be important. Dewberry is very common - it is the trailing thorny vine found in many old fields - but the berries aren't much good, at least not the ones I have eaten. I haven't personally seen the Himalyan Blackberry in PA. Our native blackberry can grow pretty aggressively and might seem like an invasive non-native plant, but it is native. It can dominate an old field for a while, but saplings and taller shrubs take over after a while, and the blackberry patch turns into a forest.
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Comments (2)
Cut down any canes that had fruit this year leave the newer looking canes that grew up this year, they will be the ones that produce berries next year.
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