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Raspberry and Gooseberry Canes
Andy McD
Posts: 33
in Fruit & veg
Couple of quick questions regarding storing raspberry and gooseberry canes. I was at a well known DIY story and noticed they had raspberry and gooseberry plants by Verve for sale, reduced down from £4 per plant to £1. No idea why or if it was just stock clearance but I picked up some.
I have placed these in a cold greenhouse until I can get the beds ready. Will they be ok there for the time being as temperatures are dropping to below 0 at the moment? Some of the canes do have green leaves on them which look ok.
I am also not sure if I need to keep them wet or if they will be ok.
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Keep them moist, dry roots do no-one any good, but not soaked. While it is still so dark and cold they are not going to be happy planted out. When it is possible, then cover with a nice warm thick layer of mulch to cosset them for their early days. Enjoy.
You need to keep them damp for now if they dry out they die off.
Do I need to soak them for a few hours prior to doing this? Trouble is I won't have time during daylight hours to do this until Saturday.
Initially I was planning to get raspberries in the ground by the end of the month/early March but I saw them going cheap and thought why not. Bit of a rushed decision.
I got a load of gooseberries from the pound shop (for guess what, £1 each), a single stalk with the end in a bag with a bit of soil in - but I got these later im the year (April I tihnk) - just bunged them in the ground as they came with no problems, they all grew. I their second year I got a decent amount of fruit from them. I did put a few in a pot in the kitchen until I had time to plant them outside - they started growing and transplanted succesfully
About 6 weeks ago I took some cuttings, put them into compost for cuttngs, kept the soil moist and these have been growing in the kitchen windowsill - all are going well with leaves appearing (they are going to mum and dads at easter so have to be in pots)
I also took some cuttings in June last year , put them in a pot with normal soil and kept them out in the garden until I took the other cuttings when they all came inside to get them growing a bit. All these inside cuttngs are growing about the same amount at the moment
The point I am making is that I have found the gooseberries are pretty hard plants to kill. I would put them in damp compost in a pot for now until you can get them in the garden, (I would also sneak them into the kitchen when no body is looking)