You can grow your own food. We can help.

Question

bazora

Do I need to protect my newly planted raspberry canes from frost? If so, how?

Crops:

raspberry

Topics:

Fruits and nuts

Question details

So today I had spent part of my morning getting my raspberry canes into the ground outside my home (I have about 9 of them, but 2 haven't been planted yet, they're still in a pot of soil). But then tonight, on my way to choir practice, I heard on the radio that they are predicting either tonight or tomorrow frost... and potentially snow down to 500 ft above sea level! So I need help -- I need to find out if a night of frost will kill my canes that just went into the ground, and what I should do to protect them! (It was kind of necessary to plant them, since my friend had given them to us yesterday and the roots were exposed from being dug up... they needed to get into soil...) Just a bit of info about where I live: I'm in northern California, right on the coast (about maybe a quarter of a mile from the ocean). I think we're zone 9? Not sure. Average temps here are about 40-85 year round (though with climate changes they've been wacky here too!) and the last time it snowed here, my now 26 year old husband was only 5 years old!

merryj

Thu, 02/24/2011 - 08:23

Established canes are certainly cold-hardy, but new transplants of any kind usually aren't. I would wrap them in some kind of fabric or burlap or, if the canes are short enough, some kind of plastic cloche would also work - we used a clear plastic 40gal storage bin as a cloche one year to get some bush beans started before the last frost had passed, and it worked well.