Fruits and Nuts: Raised beds for Raspberries, 1 by LissyJ

LissyJ wrote:
Hello, I am building a raised bed for raspberries that should get here the week of April 9th. I bought them from Nourse Farms and am getting ready. I have few questions. The first one is how deep do I need to have the soil in my raised bed? I have really bad clay soil and I have read that raspberries don't like wet feet. Well, the soil in the place I am building the bed gets quite wet. (Doesn't drain well) Right now I have a bed that is 8" deep but could go deeper if I need to. How deep do the raspberry roots get after they are established? I have read that you only need to plant them 2-3" deep for bare root when you get them. I just don't want to go through all of this work and find out that I didn't make my bed deep enough. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!!

Here is a picture to help you understand what I am doing.(a picture is worth a thousand words) I am using cinderblocks and putting in a good soil mix once the bed is completed. The funny pipe you see will be a drip system that I will put in to water the raspberries.

Lissy