Virginia Vegetable, Small Fruit and Specialty Crops
April 2002; Volume 1, Issue 4
Herbert Stiles, Small Fruit Specialist, Southern Piedmont AREC, Blackstone, VA
Grower: Hello, I am so thankful for all of the information that is out there on your web site. But I cannot seem to find how far apart to plant my summer crop red rasberries (Lathams). I have proper soil ph, raised beds, ground cover, and location. Depth is in every article but not spacing. Any help in this area would be great!
Response by Herbert Stiles, Small Fruit Specialist, Southern Piedmont AREC, Blackstone, VA :
I assume that you intend to plant all your raspberry transplants in a single row. If that is not the case, I suggest that the rows' center-lines be spaced at least 8 feet apart so that adjacent rows can be managed in such a way that inter-row shading will be avoided. If you are using a conventional 2-wire vertical trellis, that means training the floricanes to a height of 5.5 feet and preventing new canes from becoming established outside of a 12" to 18" bed that is centered on the row of trellis posts and original transplants [see related topic below].
Whether or not you'll be transplanting to a single row, different within-row plant spacings can be chosen to fit your needs and future plant-management plans. Spacing the plants as close as 1 or 2 feet can lead to quicker filling of the trellis and earlier attainment of high yields in a given length of row. Wider spacings (2.5' to 3' between transplants) will allow you to plant a longer row but it will take 3 or 4 years for the plants to mature and completely fill the trellis with adequately vigorous floricanes. [During dormant pruning, I prefer to retain only those floricanes whose diameters are at least 0.5" at the crown and 0.25" at the 6-foot topping height].
Within either of these plant-spacing schemes, you'll need to decide whether primocanes will be allowed to establish themselves only from the original plant crowns or at those crowns and within the spaces between those crowns. I suspect that the latter course would be chosen by most growers, but preventing inter-crown suckers (new primocanes arising adventitiously from roots) would help to keep individual canes and crowns more vigorous and improve air circulation so that fungus diseases might be less troublesome. Allowing canes to arise only from the original crown may also give the planting a neater and more pleasing appearance.
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