By Heidi Rader, Professor of Extension at University of Alaska Fairbanks
When I wrote about growing raspberries in Alaska, Charlotte Porter got in touch with me and wanted to tell me about her success growing Kiska raspberries and her pruning techniques at her Two Rivers farm. Twenty-five years ago, Charlotte was given six Kiska raspberry plants. Today, she has 700 row feet of raspberries, from which she harvests an average of 80 gallons a year.
I didn’t write much about Kiska in the initial article, partly because I wasn’t aware of anyone selling the plants locally or online. It was a variety developed decades ago at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station from the wild raspberry (Rubus ideaus) found throughout Alaska. When I visited Porter Hill Farm, I discovered that Charlotte and her family do a lot more than just grow raspberries.
Charlotte grew up on her family’s full-time berry farm in Illinois, growing strawberries, blueberries, and red, purple, and yellow raspberries. Strawberries were the primary cash crop and were sold mostly by U-pick, but some were sold at farmers markets.
“To my own embarrassment, I have never been able to grow strawberries well in Alaska,” Charlotte lamented. She explained, “The process here is very different than what we did in Illinois. I have a few strawberry plants that come back in my garden every year and I can’t quite bear to kill them, but the most we get is a couple of berries.” Growing strawberries in Alaska is challenging both as a home gardener and as a farmer.
But, she said, “raspberries have been much easier for me to grow.”
I’ve visited gardens and farms across Alaska. I’m amazed by what people have accomplished, but often think, “Wow, that looks like a lot of work.” But at Porter Hill Farm, I kept thinking, “That looks easy and cheap, I could do that too!” I don’t think that’s an accident. Charlotte has tried a lot of things over the years and has whittled it down to what she can grow and raise with relative ease and affordability.
For example, Charlotte showed me that her sole surviving apple tree is trimmed down by the moose every year. She has a makeshift fence around it that doesn’t quite do the job. Instead of putting a lot of energy into building a fence and planting an orchard, (which would be especially difficult on the steep slopes of her farm), she puts her energy into what grows really well at her place — Kiska raspberries. She also has a smattering of honeyberries, plums, saskatoons, currants and gooseberries on the farm, but they have not taken off like the raspberries.
Another example of her low-key approach to farming is that she raises meat rabbits outdoors in dog kennels that she picked up from the dump. They are suspended under a shed roof over slanted tin roofing so that the poop and pee roll into a bin (side note, rabbit poop is excellent for the garden). Again, it looked really easy, so now my family are proud owners of one of her baby bunnies, which also resides outside in a dog kennel. But I promised my kids I will never, ever eat her.
Yet another example of simplicity is her hole-in-the-ground root cellar. It is quite literally just a hole in the ground with an insulated top and plywood sides into which she lowers crates of potatoes and carrots, approximately a cubic yard in size. When I visited in May, she said the carrots and potatoes were just as fresh as when she stuck them in the hole in the fall.
But back to raspberries. Charlotte said, “To me, they seem to grow the easiest and produce the most fruit. They’re perennials. They last for years and years and years. And maybe it’s because I understand how to prune them because I grew up doing some of that. We had the fall-bearing kind that you’d mow down and then they’d come up and bear the next fall. And we had the spring ones, like Kiska, that you had to prune.”
In addition to Kiska, Charlotte has tried Boyne and Latham varieties. Latham died off twice after eight years from cold winters. Boyne has taken a lot longer to proliferate and produce. She planted Boyne and Kiska at the same time from bare-root plants. Many of her Boyne plants died, and after three years, they were only 18 inches tall with two or three suckers each. The Kiska were four and a half feet tall with numerous shoots and handfuls of berries coming on. But she does think in the long run, Boyne are more productive and they take a lot less pruning. If you do plant Kiska, choose your spot carefully. Do not plant it close to your garden, and if you plant it on the edge of your lawn, be prepared for it to invade.
Charlotte has developed a vigorous pruning regime for Kiska that plays a big role in their productivity. Her raspberry patch is different from most of the raspberry patches I have seen around town, both on farms and in backyards.
She said, “It’s counterintuitive. It [pruning] feels all wrong.” She knows few Fairbanksans who understand pruning. Charlotte asked a friend who grows Boyne how much they pruned. They said, “Oh we don’t really prune. We’ve found they grow really well the first and second year and so we just plant a new patch.” A local raspberry U-pick she talked to said they simply let the moose prune them. She said I was doing a decent job pruning my patch, but after visiting hers, I went back and pruned more than before — which was hard because I do think more canes equals more berries.
Pruning is an essential way to maintain the vigor and productivity of berries and fruit. I even prune wild blueberries on a piece of land I own where they grow naturally. In the wild, fire rejuvenates wild blueberry plants and is nature’s way of pruning, so to speak. Each berry or fruit has a slightly different pruning regime that may even vary depending on the variety. For more information on growing berries and pruning, check out the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service’s publications, my blog, It Grows in Alaska, or my growing fruits and berries playlist on YouTube.
Growing and pruning Kiska raspberries
Charlotte prunes her raspberries three times a year for various reasons.
Spring
Charlotte does her main pruning in the spring, removing dead floricanes (second-year, fruiting canes) and thinning primocanes (first-year, non-fruiting canes). This includes weeding the rows to 12 inches wide, with two to three canes per row foot and removing the thin canes (smaller than a pencil in diameter. She often simply pulls them up by the root. In the spring, this looked incredibly sparse, and as Charlotte said before, it’s counterintuitive. You’d think a lush, filled-in patch would produce more berries. But it doesn’t.
Then she puts her trellis, which is just one rope attached to T-posts, up. The trellis keeps the berries off the ground and keeps the rows neat. She fertilizes with wood chips, grass clippings, whatever she has available, and some conventional fertilizer every few years.
Summer
In mid-June or the third week of June, she weeds the patch, primarily of excess primocanes that may shade the floricanes. She does have irrigation set up but doesn’t always use it or notice much of a difference when she uses it. She keeps her rows narrow, 12 inches wide, mowing the grass and raspberries within it regularly.
Fall
In the fall, she uses a hedge trimmer to prune the raspberries to a 4-foot height. She takes the trellis down in case a moose walks through the patch. For some reason, moose don’t eat her raspberries.
Harvesting and selling berries
In addition to her own use, Charlotte sells the berries and plants. She and her husband pre-sell the plants on Facebook Marketplace and then bring them into town twice each summer.
They also advertise the U-pick for the raspberries on Facebook Marketplace or by word of mouth ($6 a pound). She said having a U-pick is a delicate balance of having enough raspberries to make it worth it for people to come from Fairbanks to pick and not letting the berries go to waste. So, in addition to the U-pick, she has someone who will buy all the remaining berries frozen ($30 per gallon). She lets people pick, then cleans up after them and sells those frozen. It works well because she doesn’t have time to pick all the berries herself. Her daughter sells raspberry-rhubarb jam as well.
Charlotte is happy with the niche she’s found and the scale she’s at, which is on par with her energy and interest levels. She equates it to a part-time job. She can’t justify hiring someone, which means she can’t expand, but she’s OK with that. She’s talked to a lot of vegetable CSAs, and they said it’s difficult to make a living.
“There’s just no money in vegetables on a small scale like this,” she said. I asked if raspberries were worth her time, and she said, “Oh yeah. And the plants even more so.”
Charlotte said, ”I think there’s a lot more money to be made easier with raspberries, in particular. The drawback is everyone may not have the space– you do need space to grow them–but they’re not picky about where they grow.”
Besides growing and raising food, Charlotte is eager to share what she has learned with others and offers classes on growing and pruning raspberries as well as canning.
“People want that knowledge. I don’t have time to grow raspberries for everybody, but I do have time to teach other people how to grow raspberries for themselves.” She wants to support homeschoolers in the Two Rivers area as well. She credits much of her success to the mentorship she’s received from others, including on raising rabbits, goats, and growing berries. Programs like the AFFECT program offer this kind of mentorship and it’s one of the best ways to learn about the nuances of farming and gardening in Interior Alaska.
I asked Charlotte about her favorite fruits and berries, taste-wise. She said, “Raspberries … there’s something special about a raspberry. I’ve had a plum (locally grown) that was probably the sweetest I’ve had, I was impressed. Also currants. The red currants are really good.”
I would have to agree.
Charlotte can be reached at acelrl@yahoo.com.
Questions about gardening or the Tribes Extension Program? Visit www.uaf.edu/ces/tribes Contact Heidi at hbrader@alaska.edu or (907) 474-6620. For more articles like this, go to: https://itgrowsinalaska.community.uaf.edu/
Heidi Rader is professor of Extension in partnership with Tanana Chiefs Conference. This work is supported by the Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program Project 2022-41580-37957. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
UA is an AA/EO employer and educational institution and prohibits illegal discrimination against any individual: www.alaska.edu/nondiscrimination.