Australian and New Zealand Gardening: rubus probus or atherton raspberry, 1 by aussie_flower

aussie_flower wrote:
Hi, I have grown raspberries and boysenberries from seeds before, and they seem to be quite easy to grow.
They however do take quite a while to become fruit bearing plants from seed (as leat 3 years), where as a cutting from a boysenberry can produce fruit in 6 months.

I have just finished growing yellow raspberry seeds, and they are doing great.
I first prepared a sprouting box. This is a polystyrene box that has sand and cow poop in it. The seedlings need good drainage and the cow poop makes them have a good growth spurt. This should be done a few months beforehand as the cow poop really needs to be broken down and decomposed. I had previously used that box for pepino seeds and parsley seeds.

Then you get your seeds, mine were from eBay.
I got 10 seeds, to which 9 sprouted.
The seeds are tiny so they were put in a 2mm trench and back filed, but if you water them too much they will float to the surface.
The key is to have a damp soil mixture but not wet, they don’t need to be watered that much.
I placed the box in a shaded area in a sheltered position from wind and severe sun.

After a few weeks they sprouted and I left them to grow and thin themselves out.
I left them in the sprouting box for around 12 months; I was left with 4 large plants.
They were 15cm tall plants. When transplanting small plants they seem to suffer badly from transplant shock, that’s why I only transplant them when they are mature, this way you won’t loose any plants.
I placed them into individual pots.
I am now letting them grow a little more and hoping that there soft stems will thicken up and turn into hard wood so next year I can hope to see some fruiting canes.
I am trialling one in a open garden bed to see if I can trick it into hardening off quicker, this plant is growing in the sun – which it dint overly like a first but is now doing fine, the others are still in a shaded and protected side of the house.

I will add some pictures of my plants for you later on :)

Boysenberries in flower