Expanding the Orchard: Adding Raspberry Plants

Since inception, I've wanted to convert the far field into an orchard.  Since moving in, we've struggled with having enough time to work on it, tried to work around when it's best to plant things, and had a big drain on the wallet for a variety of reasons. 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I ordered some Royalty purple raspberry plants.  They arrived just in time for us to go out of town to visit Wifey's parents so my parents have held onto them until I could retrieve them.

I took the day off so The Bear could get tubes put in his ears.  Once all that was successfully accomplished, I dug four holes in the orchard to accommodate the four Royalty plants.  The Boy and The Girl provided copious amounts of moral support.

Some details about the hole-digging:

According to the Maryland cooperative extension, purple raspberry plants need to be a minimum of 3' between plants with a minimum of 8' between rows.  To be on the safe side, I dug each hole such that the center is 4' apart with 10' between the base of the blueberries and the center of each hole.

I've seen how much space some of the blueberry bushes take up from many trips to Larriland Farm and I've seen how large some of the raspberry plants can get on their guide lines.  Although my tendency is to try to maximize the number of plants in a given area, I think encouraging airflow is necessary.  Also necessary is the ability to allow the plants to stretch out their growth.  Thus: 4' and 10' distances.

Other useful info:

The botanical name is Rubus strigosus 'Royalty'.  According to the cooperative extension, a "bramble" type is any species belonging to the Rubus genus.