Small Fruits

Small fruits are fruits grown on smaller perennial plants. They produce fruit every year and need less space than a fruit tree.

The Dormanred raspberry is the best type to grow in hotter weather, like California. Other types like cold weather better.
When planting raspberries, install trellises on top of them. They are small fences that allow the plant to grow up, which lets you grow more fruit.
When growing raspberries, do not put them near nightshade plants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc.). Nightshade diseases like verticillium wilt, may transfer to woody plants, like raspberries.

Blueberries take a long time to grow, but there is a high reward! You can start picking fruit off of the plant when it is 2 to 3 years old.

Blueberries like acidic soil (pH 4.0-5.5) that has a lot of organic fertilizer. You can purchase a pH soil tester online to check what pH your soil is at. If your soil is not acidic enough for blueberries, you could use a garden ‘acid mix’ to add to the garden bed to decrease the pH.
In the first 2 years of growing blueberries, you should prune off fruit so that the plant can focus on growing stronger instead. This means that in the first 2 springs, you should cut off the flowers and dead parts of the plant so that it can grow better.

References: Unsplash, NC State, University of Minnesota, Illinois University, MiracleGro

Every once in a while, try to remove the “runner” plants from your strawberries. Runner plants are baby strawberry plants connected to the original plant by a vine. If you leave too many, they will take over your garden.
When planting strawberries, make sure the “crown” is above soil. That is where the leaves and fruits grow out of. If it is buried, then the plant can rot and die.