Raspberries - Little advice please

[sarah_rance]

Hi everyone,
Couple questions for you

I bought a couple of Raspberry canes for £1 each at the weekend - they were reduced and I couldnt resist them.

I grow in containers so have put each one in a big flower bucket. They are just canes about a foot tall. No foliage at all and a bare cut at the top of the cane.

What can I expect this year? Should I cut them right down to the top of the compost this year and leave them for next year, or should I leave them and see what happens?

Any advice welcome guys

Sarah x

[FB.]

Either the plants have been kept in cold storage to stop them leafing out, or they're dead. Maybe they were reduced because nobody bought the ones which weren't showing any signs of life.

If they've been kept in cold storage to keep them dormant, they may behave strangely this year, so they could do absolutely anything!
I would just leave them to get on with it for a year or two, and then start pruning according to whether they are autumn-fruiters (cut down every winter) or summer-fruiters (two-year-old canes removed in winter but the youngest canes left to fruit the following year).

If you grow them in a bucket, make sure that it has some drainage or it may become waterlogged which will kill raspberries. On the other hand, raspberries need adequate water - and potted plants will easily dry out in summer.
Potted plants will also require the compost changing every 2-3 years as the plants will use up all the nutrients and the roots will not be able to move into nearby soil to find more nutrients.

My raspberries (planted in the ground) are growing strongly now with some good, thick stems 1-2ft tall tall - they leafed-out and flowered couple of months ago (although some of mine are flowering again) and now the earlier flowers have turned into half-grown fruits which, if I look closely, might just beginning to turn from green to a faint reddish colour.

[rustylady]

Where did you buy them from? As FB says, it's really the wrong time of the year to be buying fruit bushes / canes.

[sarah_rance]

Thanks Guys

I realise the timing for these canes is off totally but at a quid each i figured I wasnt losing too much if they were proper dead :-)

I bought em from the local garden centre. I'll just leave em for now and see if there is any life in there.