Delicious berries growing right in your kitchen is a delight. You can grow all types of berries indoors, including strawberries, goji berries and raspberries. The only problem that you'll have is that everyone will want some, and there might not be enough. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Purchase the berry bush Tulameen or use a Tulameen tissue-cultured raspberry plug to start your plant. Every variety of raspberry performs differently indoors and outdoors. These berries, normally grown in British Columbia, grow superbly in greenhouses and will do the same in your home. Start two plants, since they produce better if you use the second plant to pollinate.
2. Start the raspberry plants outside in May. Use a 5 gallon container with a mixture of equal parts sand, vermiculite, peat and perlite. Make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom of the container; raspberries hate wet roots. If you have an offer of free berry bushes, dig up the bush and put it in a 5 gallon container. Trim away all the dead canes.
3. Set the pots on top of a gravel bed. Allow your pot of raspberries to thrive in the summer sun. As winter approaches, you'll need to surround the pot with straw as it gets cold. You want the plant cold enough to be dormant but not so cold that the roots freeze and it dies. The roots of the raspberry in a pot are particularly susceptible to freezing. Once the leaves drop, but before it hits 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, in the Northern climates this is usually mid- to late-November or December, bring the raspberry indoors.
4. Keep them by a chilly window. They do well in temperatures between 60 and 70 degrees, so keep them a little cooler. Your raspberries will produce flowers in about six weeks (mid-January).
5. Pretend you're a bee if you want it to fruit. Use a Q-tip or paint brush to take the pollen from one of the flowers and deliver it to a different flower. If you have two plants, then take the pollen from one plant and put it on the flowers of the other.
6. Harvest the berries in about four more weeks (mid-February). You can leave the plant indoors, but should allow it to have a dormant stage or it wears itself out. Just like people, plants need a little rest, and the cool weather provides that time. You can move the plant outside in May or simply set it in a cool garage for a few months to achieve dormancy.
7. Remove all but four new canes. These primocanes produce the next year's crop of berries you grow indoors.
Tags: gallon container, pollen from, take pollen, take pollen from
