Berries Unlimited

Raspberries are always a summer and fall treat, easy, fun to grow, and a joy to have in the garden. When any of your newly planted raspberry plants fail to show vigor, and sometimes not survive the first year in your garden, one must wonder if fully healthy, disease free plants were purchased. Sometimes young raspberry plants purchased very late in the season will understandably arrive in less than ideal condition because of the high heat and strong sunlight late in the summer, by overhead watering in a greenhouse or by in-transit delays during shipping. Sometimes a gardener might neither have time nor opportunity to handle new plants in a timely way on arrival, and end up with plants that are not picture perfect. None of these circumstances mean the plants may not be in good enough condition to plant and to be cared for with good cultural management. Successful planting of challenged plants is possible by virtue of the best methods of propagation of strong, virus resistant plants. What measures assure healthy, strong, very productive plants? Both tissue culturing and virus indexing are methods of assuring ultra high quality standards. Tissue culture is a set of methods of propagation that grows carefully selected, isolated tissues in a controlled, sterile environment, and that assures consistent quality. Virus indexing is a method of testing samples of tissue cultured plants to detect diseases other than those that might later be mechanically transmitted by air motion, insects or nearby undocumented plants. These methods ensure high rates of exclusion of plant viruses, and growth of stronger, very successful plants for our gardens. Benefits of healthy plants The Fall Gold in the picture is a tissue cultured, virus indexed plant purchased from Berries Unlimited in late August of 2019, and planted in my garden. Having purchased the plant very late in the season, I was a little concerned about its condition. After having been hardened slowly, in the garden the young plant struggled a bit from heat shock in the full southwestern sun exposure. In late fall, it went dormant at the hard freeze on 7 October. Because the Fall Gold was tissue cultured and virus indexed, the strong bramble returned in excellent condition in the next spring and grew very impressively. Challenges to its strength and quality would come the following year. This is the second year that Japanese Beetles appeared in my garden. Last year only about a dozen beetles were found. This year I must have dispatched hundreds of them manually, but they still did a lot of damage. The yellow raspberry plants were the most frequented subjects in the garden. The tissue cultured, disease indexed Fall Gold in the picture resisted constant feeding by Japanese beetles, and in spite of the very real damage, it’s canes and leaves were adequately vigorous to produce the large, sweet, premium quality fruit in the photo. Also, in spite of having been damaged by the beetles, the Fall Gold was strong enough to resist natural transmission of diseases. When I buy berry plants from Berries Unlimited, I know that I have purchased the best quality plants on the market, and with good cultural gardening methods, they never fail to grow vigorously and to produce abundant, delicious fruit.