Amber Butchart, age 13, of Burlington, Vt., for her question:
WHERE DO RASPBERRIES GROW BEST?
The raspberry is a thorny bush that grows in a number of areas in the Northern Hemisphere. Raspberries grow beat in fine, deep, sandy loam and in regions where summers are cool. Only a few sections in the United States are suitable for growing raspberries because of the extremes of climate.
The best raspberry growing regions in the United States are along the North Atlantic Coast, the Great Lakes region and the Pacific Coast states.
Raspberries belong to the rose family. The stems and branches of the raspberry bush bear only once, in their second year. Growers then cut off the branches at the ground. But they allow new stems that have grown from the roots to remain. These bear the fruit for the next year.
The rounded raspberries are much like blackberries. The berries grow from a quarter of an inch to an inch or more in diameter. Each looks like a cluster of tiny beads, colored red, black or purple. Each bead, called a drupelet, is a cell that contains a tiny seed.
The berries grow around a part of the plant called the standard or receptacle. When the fruit is ripe, it separates easily from the receptacle. Pickers remove the fruit entirely from its standard as well as from the branch. The blackberry does not separate from the standard. This is the prinicpal difference between blackberries and raspberries.
Raspberries are among the most popular of all bush fruits. Among the small fruits, they rank second in importance only to the strawberry.
To obtain new red raspberry bushes, growers usually plant new shoots, called suckers, which grow out of the roots of the old plant. But they grow black and purple raspberries from tip layers. In this method, the grower bends the tips of the plants over and covers them with earth. These tips develop roots which the grower transplants the following season.
Red raspberries ripen first, but produce the least fruit. Black raspberries ripen next and the purple last. The purple variety bears the most fruit.
Black raspberries have larger seeds than the red.
All raspberries are picked when they are ripe but still firm. People use them for making pies and jams, for canning and as a dessert fruit.
Mosaic and other virus diseases have greatly harmed and even ruined the red raspberry crop in some areas. Plants affected with these diseases must be destroyed and replaced by disease free plants.
Anthracnose, or bitter rot, forms dark, depressed areas on the canes and shoots. It is a serious disease of black raspberries. Growers control this disease by spraying the bushes and by pruning out all except the newest shoots immediately after harvest.