Raspberries Done for 2013

We opened the high tunnel to let the raspberries go dormant for the winter.  It's supposed to get down into the single digits F over the next couple of days.  My plan is to try to keep the high tunnel open for most of the winter, but I'm not sure if that is a good idea or not.  My hope is that the high tunnel can handle being open when we get high wind storms during the winter. I don't want to close the high tunnel and have the temps popping up and triggering the raspberries to break their dormancy too early, or not be dormant enough and damaging the raspberries with freeze thaw.  Time will tell I guess.  One thing is for sure.  We won't have any greens out of the high tunnel this year.

Berries Too Cold

I think I may have let the raspberries get too cold one night last week.  When I got up in the morning it was 27F at about 5am.  I didn't check to see how long it was down that low, but I figured it had to be quite a while.  I've only run the heater for a few nights this fall, so I turned on the heater in the high tunnel, but I think it was too late. The quality of the ripe berries is poor. I'm hoping that the berries that are still unripe will ripen well, but we won't know until we get some sun on the plants and see how they move forward.  Guess we'll know as the week goes on.