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  • From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
  • To: NAFEX List <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Raspberry winter kill
  • Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 10:44:45 -0500

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





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