Pathfinder Raspberry
- Zone 3
Characteristics of the tree
Pathfinder is one of the most productive and hardy fall-bearing raspberries. It suckers easily, an advantage as it will quickly produce smaller plants on which more fruit can grow, to fill the space in which it is planted. It is also very tasty!
The fruit of Pathfinder is quite large, measuring about 2cm in diameter and weighing around 3g. It is firm, but melts in the mouth. This raspberry has a very good, ‘classic’ flavour: with a nice balance between sweet and sour, it is exactly what you expect from a good raspberry! The fruit can be harvested over a period of more than a month during late summer and fall; from early August until the first frosts.
Pathfinder is the third generation of seedlings from a cross between northern Wyoming plants and the variety Augustred that was developed at the High Plains Grasslands Research Station, Cheyenne, Wyoming. It took 24 years of plant breeding and field evaluation to come up with Pathfinder, before the US Department of Agriculture released it to nurserymen in 1976.
As Pathfinder is a fall-bearing raspberry, the care is a bit different to that of ordinary raspberry canes, but very simple! As this type of raspberry plant gives fruit on the new canes of the year, the best way to work with it is to prune it right down to the ground in fall, after they have finished to fruit. Just remove everything that is above ground level. In spring, new canes will grow, and these new canes will produce fruit in August.
Raspberries multiply themselves naturally by means of suckers, shoots from their roots that colonise the surrounding environment. They can be invasive, and it is therefore best to plant them on the edges of your garden, or somewhere that this will not be a problem.
We suggest planting your raspberry canes in a row with 2ft in between each plant. Planted at this distance, the raspberry brambles will fill the row in about three years. If you wish your raspberry plants to fill the row in less than 3 years, plant them at a distance of less than 2ft apart, while if you want the raspberry plants to take more than 3 years to fill the row, plant them at a greater distance.
It’s important to note that the roots of the raspberry plants are e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y sensitive to drying out during plantation. As with all the plants we sell, the raspberry plants are sold bare-rooted. This means that when you receive them, they are not in pots but are packed in earth and wrapped in thick plastic. When you open the package, the roots will be exposed to air and sun and will start to dry out. The roots can dry out and die in less than 30 seconds!
How do you plant without drying the roots? It’s simple. Dig your holes before you open the package; situate yourself beside the first hole, take out one raspberry plant at a time, close the package again immediately, and bury the roots of the raspberry plant without delay. Continue this way with the other holes. The important step is to close the package immediately after taking each plant out.
Alternatively, you can also open the package and place all the raspberry plants in a bucket of water, and go from hole to hole with the bucket, planting each raspberry plant as soon as it is taken out of the bucket. Warning! Ensure that there is enough water in the bucket to cover the entire root system of the plants.
Once all the raspberry brambles are planted, water them abundantly. Planted this way, you should have a 100% success rate.
All our raspberry canes are sold bare-root, without pots. They have been cultivated directly in our soil. Bare-root trees must be taken out of the ground and shipped during their period of dormancy, which is why we only ship trees in the spring. A big advantage with these kinds of trees is that they take up very little space, and can therefore be easily shipped by mail all over Canada!
This photograph shows a 1-3-foot raspberry cane, just like one that you might receive. Depending on our availability at the time of order preparation, it might be slightly taller, (closer to 3 feet) or somewhat smaller (closer to 1 foot in height).
