The wide popularity that raspberries gained everywhere can be explained, in addition to its benefits and taste, by the unpretentiousness of this extremely useful berry culture. In some regions they treat it almost like a weed. It seems to many that she can grow herself without problems. The main thing is to plant a good variety on the site so that there is always fresh raspberry on the table in season. Fertilizing and grooming are not necessary procedures, because a bush grows without it in the wild, in forests and ravines. However, such a fairly common misconception does not allow amateur gardeners to collect large crops. Raspberry bears fruit on last year's shoots, which have at least two branches. With proper care from each bush, you can collect up to three kilograms of delicious berries.
Growth and fruiting
This garden crop grows well and bears fruit only on slightly acidic soil rich in organic matter. Therefore, regular feeding raspberries in autumn or spring is the key to a good harvest.
The bushes of this berry make the most requirements for a sufficient content of nitrogen and potassium in the soil. The presence of phosphorus is also important.
Raspberry dressing
With a normal pre-planting fertilizer supplement, the first three years can only be carried out top dressing raspberries in the fall. And then every year it will be necessary to add a mixture of organics, superphosphate and potassium salt. The calculation of the amount of fertilizer depends on the composition of the soil. Raspberry top dressing in the fall, most often in September, is carried out to improve the laying of the kidneys and increase the yield for next year. To do this, fertilizers are applied to specially made grooves located at a distance of thirty centimeters from the bushes, at a depth of almost twenty centimeters.
Some recommendations
Feeding raspberries in the fall with potash, organic and phosphorus fertilizers is mandatory, but manure should be applied only in the spring. On too light soil, its amount is recommended to be increased by thirty percent. This is because fertilizers can be washed out of such soil by groundwater. And for raspberries, in which the root system is not deep, this fact is very relevant. Given this factor, as well as the fact that traditional phosphorus fertilizers with some substances contained in the soil can form substances inaccessible to the culture in question, experienced gardeners use special techniques.
Feeding Features
Firstly, in the fall, raspberries are fed with mineral supplements only in conjunction with the obligatory organic ones. In addition, those
mineral fertilizers are used that dissolve slowly in water. These are
phosphorite flour, cement dust, many complex top dressings, for example, “AVA”, produced in the form of granules or powder. If feeding raspberries in the fall is superphosphate or
potassium sulfate, then in the spring it is enough to add up to eighty grams of
ammonium nitrate per square meter of planting
. As a rule, in some regions, this garden plant does not suffer from a significant lack of nutrients due to rotting of the mulch. Therefore, in such cases, the autumn feeding of raspberries can be compensated by the addition of another layer of compost.