…as opposed to when the berries rot/are eaten by bugs/dry up?
The short answer is yes. Raspberry plants reproduce largly through the ecreta of birds, bugs, rodents and sometimes humans. The ones that drop to the forest floor can sprout as well, often a raspberry patch is thick with thorned families of rasberry bushes tightly growing together. The plants themselves are quite prolific and they produce several phases of berries a season, I don’t know the exact number, I want to say 3 phases.
This is the second year for my raspberries, so far I pick about 6 a day. For all that foilage (what isn’t being eaten by Japanese beetles), you’d think I’d have more than that. I’m hopeful I’ll get enough to make a pie.
Raspberries are cane berries. The new canes that grow this year are the ones that will have berries on them next year. The canes that flower this year are last year’s new canes and will have berries and then the canes will die. So you always have new growing canes that will produce the next year, and berries growing on the canes from last year, that will die once fruiting is done.
You don’t really affect the output of the fruit bearing canes by picking them. They have already flowered by the time you see berries. If you water them after you pick the first batch of berries, the smaller berries do have a better chance of getting larger, but the canes are already in the process of dying.
There are so called ‘everbearing’ varieties that continue to flower for a longer period, but I have found that the flavor is not as good.
No.
Straight to the point, I like that.
Thanks all for your responces.
Some varieties (so called ‘autumn-fruiting’) bear fruit on the tips of the current year’s growth.