Last year we had just one raspberry cane and it fruited. It didn’t take up much space, though, so we were able to grow strawberries around its base and plant them beside the blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes.

So when we got nine new canes this year to take our stock up to 10, which will all fruit at different times and should provide us with red berries from mid summer until early autumn, we probably planted them a little bit close to each other.

Raspberry canes need to be spaced – ideally – 50cm apart. We gave ours 30cm as they looked like puny twigs and we were tight on space in the fruit beds. Now that last year’s root stock is coming back to life, though, it’s starting to look like we’ve slightly underestimated. The picture below shows one of this year’s canes on the left and, on the right, early growth on the trimmed down cane from last year.

Even this early in the season the old stock is about 10 times larger than the new, which means that next year we’ll have 9 further canes that size. Clearly we’re going to have to move the blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes to give them room to grow together.

Much as I love raspberries it does seem slightly extravagant giving over a whole bed to just one fruit.

Bear this in mind if you’re planting your own.

Related posts:

1. Three years of raspberry growth
2. Planting raspberry canes
3. Tidying up the raspberry plants for winter