North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

Most of my black raspberry canes died over the past winter, or at least 
the tops of them did. The roots are all fine, and many of the canes 
sprouted out from the bottom two feet, or so, but only a very few leafed 
out all the way. I've been growing them for close to ten years, I think, 
and this has never happened before. This will be easily the worst year 
I've ever had (although, admittedly, last year was one of the best).

I asked the county extension office if other people here were 
experiencing winter-kill in their raspberries, but they didn't know of 
any. They just said they'd heard of "some" winter-kill of other plants 
(which, I suspect, is pretty much what they'd say every year). Well, 
they've never seemed to know much about fruit, anyway.

But I was wondering...  One difference this year is how dry it's been, 
even for Nebraska. We've only received 2.72 inches of precipitation YTD, 
which is six inches below normal. I usually spend all summer watering 
like crazy, but I don't normally worry about it in the spring (since I'm 
always exceptionally busy then, anyway), unless I've just planted 
something. So I'm wondering if that's why the old canes died. Do you 
think it might just have been too dry for them? The roots are still 
sprouting out new canes like crazy, though.

I can't think of any other possible reason for this. It didn't get 
exceptionally cold over the winter (down to -12 F. once, which is close 
enough to normal). The temperature dropped to 23 degrees F. in April, 
when they were just starting to leaf out, but that's a lot better than 
some years, and the cold really didn't seem to bother any canes that 
were still alive. I can't see any insect problems (I've never seen any 
evidence of borers), and I've never had disease problems (the canes have 
always been covered with spots that I suspect is anthracnose, but it's 
never seemed to make any difference).

Just thought I'd see what people here thought. After all, I can't learn 
from my mistakes if I don't know what they were. :-)

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
From the perspective of my hunter-gatherer forebears in the Pleistocene 
Era, everything in the room I write in - the ceramic cup and the 
carpentered chair no less than the electric light and the computer - was 
as imaginary, as unreal, as fantastic as Narnia or Hogwarts. - Alison 
Gopnik