Vintage Raspberry

For a long time the raspberry called Heritage has been the ‘go-to’ variety for home and commercial growers. It is prolific, with good flavor, and vigorous, giving a high yield. It usually has a ripe crop of delicious berries in July and August. Now, for all you raspberry lovers out there, we offer you the next-generation in delicious berries – the Vintage Raspberry. Superior in every way, it has a higher yield and a sweeter, more highly-rated flavor, while still ripening late in the season, just when you want those delicious berries for summer and early fall treats. Nothing beats raspberries for that wonderful, lingering aroma, that tangy sweetness, or the bright, appealing red color, but this raspberry beats them all for flavor and yield. You will harvest your first berries within 2 years, and very soon you can look forward to as much as 5 pounds of berries per bush. Raspberries are among the most expensive berries in the stores – they are difficult to harvest, fragile to ship, and deteriorate quickly. That’s why it makes sense to grow your own. You get them in perfect condition, fresh, still warm from the sun, and simply delicious. There is nothing vintage or old about this berry – grow it and you’ll see.

Growing the Vintage Raspberry

Size and Appearance

The Vintage Raspberry is a deciduous shrub with many upright stems, called ‘canes’, that rise up to 5 or 6 feet in height. They arch outwards making a bush about 4 feet wide. The stems are green when young, turning gray-brown and thorny. Leaves grow all along the new canes, each one divided into 3 almost circular leaflets, each about 2 inches long, with a fine, serrated edge and a crinkly, mat-green surface. The underside of the leaves is silvery. Each year new canes grow from the base, to flower later in the season, while the canes that grew in the previous year send out short side shoots, carrying one or two flowers at every leaf in April or May. The flowers are small and white, with 5 petals and a yellow center – decorative with a simple charm. This bush needs no second variety for pollination – it is entirely self-fertile. By July the canes of the previous year will be carrying ripe berries, and then through September, and into early October, the new canes produce another crop of large bright-red berries. Exactly when you harvest will vary with your growing area, and how you grow them, but this variety is ideal for late crops. The berries are sweet and delicious, with just enough tang to keep them interesting. They have consistently rated as ‘excellent’ in taste trials, and this really is a wonderful raspberry for berry lovers. Eat them fresh from the bush, with cereal or fruit salads, as purée on ice-cream, baked into muffins or turned into jam. With the big crop of 5 pounds per bush in the fall harvest, you will be able to do it all.

Using the Vintage Raspberry in Your Garden

Because of its compact size, this bush can be grown using the traditional system of wires, or simply planted among your shrubs as a free-standing bush. Plant it right outside the kitchen door, or along a path for easy picking. For bigger crops and when you are growing several bushes, you can also plant in a row, spacing them 3 feet apart, between poles driven into the ground. Space the poles 10 feet apart and stretch two wires, one at 2 feet and one at 4 feet above the ground. Tie in the new canes as they grow, spreading them out to make room for the side-shoots that will form the next year. Cut off the tip just above the top wire. For something different, plant it at the top of a wall and pull down the canes, for a cascading berry cornucopia.

Hardiness

The Vintage Raspberry will grow from zone 4 to zone 8. In colder zones there can be some damage to the canes, but you still get a good fall harvest from the new ones that sprout in spring. This is a great variety for berry production in cold zones.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Place your Vintage Raspberry bushes in full sun, in any well-drained soil. The biggest yields come from rich soils, so add plenty of compost or organic material when planting, and as spring mulch. It has a slight preference for acid soils, but grows well in all but very alkaline earth.

Maintenance and Pruning

Your young plants come tested and free of all virus diseases, and it is generally free of disease. Any pests, like greenflies, can easily be controlled with our Neem Oil spray. You can choose two growth cycles. For a large fall crop only, cut down the canes completely in late fall or early spring. The new canes will flower and fruit in their first year. For fruit from summer through fall, remove canes that flower in summer as soon as you have harvested. Tie in the newer canes to the wires if you are using them. Trim back the side-shoots after the fall harvest – new shoots and flowers will form on these canes the next spring. It is important to choose one method and prune as needed. Left alone bushes soon become tangled and thorny, and hard to harvest.

History and Origin of the Vintage Raspberry

The red raspberry, Rubus idaeus, grows both in Europe and North America, all they way from Alaska to North Carolina. The variety called Vintage was created by Chad Finn and his team of professional fruit breeders at the Horticultural Crops Research Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, based in Corvallis, Oregon. It was selected from among many seedlings grown from seed of the Californian variety ‘Isabel’ in 2003 and extensively trialed in different states before being patented in 2014.

Buying the Vintage’ Raspberry at the Tree Center

This is the perfect opportunity to update your existing raspberry bushes, or start growing them for the first time. You will love the Vintage Raspberry, and especially its top-rated flavor – simply delicious. Order your plants now, because word of this fabulous berry-bush is spreading, and demand far outstrips supply.