Photo: Kollányi Gábor — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 8
Harvest calendar
Ripens: Summer-fruiting: June–July; primocane: Aug–Oct
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Excellent fresh.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–8
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer-fruiting: June–July; primocane: Aug–Oct
- Mature size
- Erect canes 1.5–2.5 m; wants a post-and-wire row or other support
- Light
- Full sun
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Native across Europe — including Britain, from Iceland south to Spain — and across temperate Asia; long naturalized in northern and eastern North America, where it now grows wild alongside native Rubus species.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 1–2 yrs
- Growth speed
- Medium overall growth rate, but primocanes are fast within a season — a cane can reach its full 1.5–2 m height from the ground in a single growing season before overwintering to fruit the next year.
- Spacing
- 60 cm (24 in) apart — about 2.8 per m² (2.6 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Pinnately compound leaves with 3–5 (occasionally 7) toothed leaflets, dark green above and whitish-downy beneath. Canes are biennial and armed with slender, scattered prickles — less fiercely thorny than most blackberries.
- Root system
- A long-lived perennial crown and root system supports biennial canes (each cane grows vegetatively in year one, fruits and dies in year two). Roots spread laterally and sucker freely, sending up new canes some distance from the crown.
- Fruit description
- A true raspberry — the many small drupelets cohere into a conical to rounded cap that separates cleanly from the pale, cone-shaped receptacle when picked, leaving the classic hollow center. Red, soft, and juicy, with an aromatic, sweet-tart flavor generally considered more refined than the wild American red raspberry (R. strigosus).
- Propagation
- Almost always propagated vegetatively rather than from seed — seedlings are variable and slow to fruit. Tip layering (bending a cane to the ground and covering the tip with soil in July, then severing and transplanting the rooted tip in autumn) is standard, along with digging and transplanting root suckers, division of the crown in early spring or autumn, and half-ripe wood cuttings taken in July–August. Named cultivars are propagated this way to keep them true to type.
- Pollination
- SELF-FERTILE
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Established plantings typically receive about 2–3 oz nitrogen per 10 ft of row (roughly 50–80 lb N/acre) per year, split between an early-spring application to fuel primocane growth and a smaller follow-up around mid-June; missing the early-spring timing measurably reduces vigor and yield. Prefers a well-drained loamy soil on the acid side (pH 6.0–6.5) enriched with organic matter — avoid heavy clay, light sand, or alkaline ground.
How it spreads. Spreads mainly by root suckers — an extensive perennial root system throws up new canes at a distance from the original crown, forming a colony that, left unmanaged, spreads indefinitely into a thicket. Tip-layering (canes rooting where the tip touches soil) occurs but is secondary to suckering in this species, unlike in the blackberries.
Growing tips. Fruits mainly on floricanes (second-year canes) in summer-bearing types, but many modern cultivars are primocane-fruiting ("everbearing"), cropping on first-year canes in autumn and again on the same canes' lower portion the following summer if left uncut. Prune summer-bearing types by removing spent floricanes right after harvest and thinning primocanes to about 6 in apart; primocane types can simply be mowed to the ground each winter for a single heavy autumn crop. Wants full sun — cropping drops off noticeably in shade — with shelter from strong wind, and should be kept away from ground that has grown potatoes, tomatoes, or wild brambles, which harbor verticillium wilt and other soilborne disease. Also susceptible to cane and spur blight, anthracnose, and viruses spread by aphids, but — usefully — red raspberry is resistant to the orange rust that plagues black raspberries and blackberries.
Grow journal
Sign in to keep a dated log of when you planted, bloomed and harvested this plant.