American Red Raspberry

Size, growth and what to expect

American red raspberry grows at a medium pace, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. Its erect to arching canes stand 3 to 6 feet tall, and a patch spreads 3 to 9 feet across. The roots live for years, while each cane lives two summers. A wild patch often fades within 5 to 12 years as trees close over it.

Small white flowers open in loose clusters from May into July. The berries ripen in July and August, red, soft and sweet, and they come off the core as a hollow cup. Songbirds, black bears, coyotes, foxes, raccoons and small mammals eat them.

It grows wild across Canada and Alaska and south in the East to the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. In the West it reaches south through the mountains to New Mexico, Arizona and California. It lives in clearings, burns, old fields, roadsides and woods edges, on stream banks, and on rock slides above timberline. Records from Delaware and Missouri are of plants escaped from gardens. North Carolina lists it as threatened.

How to grow American Red Raspberry

American red raspberry fruits best in full sun and thins out in shade. It grows in most soils, sandy loam to silty clay, if they drain well and stay moist, and wet ground rots the roots. It spreads by suckers from its roots and soon fills a patch, so keep it to a row about a foot wide by pulling the strays. Keep it away from a patch of garden raspberries or blackberries, since wild brambles nearby can bring diseases into the patch. Set plants 3 feet apart, and keep each one 4 feet from a wall. It is small enough to stand within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in early spring while they are still dormant, in a hole wide enough to spread the roots and at the depth they grew. Put the native soil back in, firm it gently, and water it well. Sow the cleaned seed outdoors in late summer, an eighth of an inch deep. For spring, hold the seed damp and warm for 90 days, then in the refrigerator for 90 days first. Seedlings come up in spring, some not until the second. Most plants are raised from suckers or divisions, since seed is slow and uneven to sprout. Seed-grown plants vary in the size and flavor of their berries, and none comes true to a named garden variety.

Water weekly from flowering until the harvest when rain is short. Rabbits eat the canes in winter, so circle young plants with chicken wire. After the harvest, cut the canes that fruited to the ground. Thin the new canes to four or five strong ones per foot of row, and tie them to a support.

Wild red raspberry almost always needs pollen from another plant to set fruit, so plant two or more from different seed for a crop. A patch spread from one root counts as one plant. Bees do most of the pollinating, with help from flies and beetles. Each cane bears in its second summer and then dies, so a seedling first fruits in its second year. Anthracnose, gray mold and root rot can be serious diseases. Cane borers and crown borers are its most serious insects.