Raspberries..........yum.

Raspberry jam, raspberry daquiries, raspberry tarts, raspberry margaritas, raspberries in sugar on ice cream, raspberry wine. The possibilities are endless. If you only want to try one fruit to grow this is by far the easiest. Yes, less work than strawberries. Raspberry plants will last around 20 years. About 2-3 plants per person will give you lots for fresh eating and some for freezing. Want more? Plant more! These beauties above are the raspberries plants we grow and sell, yes....they can be yours. The above photo was from my Zumbrota farm. The plant was bareroot in the spring, no bigger than a pencil, and you can see the rewards later that SAME year. The 2 varieties we have are 'Ruby' and 'Autumn Bliss.' These are 'fall bearing' raspberries. Don't let the 'fall' fool you, I picked a handful of these beauties this afternoon. As soon as there is enough to sell, I'll post it here. These are the differences between 'summer fruiting' and 'fall bearing':
Summer fruiting: bear fruit on a cane that is 2 years old, then that cane is done. So every yr. you need to figure out which canes are 1 and which are 2. So only 1/2 of your canes bear fruit any given year. Start producing heavy in mid summer.
Fall bearing: Prune the entire plant back to the ground every fall or early spring, and it regrows an entirely new plant every year, bearing fruit on all the new canes. Heavy fruiting starts later than summer ones, but total poundage is the same. They bear until hard frost. PLUS, by pruning and removing all the canes every fall, this type is less prone to disease as you are removing all of the foliage from the garden every year.

When picking raspberries, first check out the color, should be dark red and they should pull of the plant easily. If you have to tug on them at all, they are not ready.
Raspberries do not like mulch next to the canes. You can mulch within 1 foot w/straw. The biggest problem I have is with the picnic beetle. Scroll down to older posts to see my invention the 'scrap trap' to capture them! I used to grow 1/2 acre of raspberries, about 3,000 plants!
(they were right next to my 2 acres of strawberries) I can't do anything in a reasonable matter. There...I've said it.