Raspberry variety Red Guard
More and more people prefer remontant varieties that can bear fruit on the shoots of the current year and delight their owners with tasty and healthy berries for a long time. One of these is the Red Guard raspberry, bred by the famous Russian academician I. V. Kazakov. It is rightfully considered one of the best and most attractive varieties in his collection for gardeners.
The variety was bred in 2005 as a numbered hybrid, later named Red Guard. The very name was given to him due to the very uniform, large, beautiful, ideal conical shape of berries of dark red with a glossy color, reminiscent of the detachments of selected soldiers in purple uniforms. Drupes are small, tightly interconnected.
With good agricultural technology, the size of a berry can reach up to 5 cm in length, with an average weight of 8-10 grams, but there are also specimens with a record weight of up to 18 grams for remontant raspberries!
Of course, to achieve such results, regular watering, timely feeding, preventive measures for pest control and other agrotechnical methods that each gardener chooses for himself, such as, for example, soil mulching, and the like, are necessary.
In addition to the uniform size of the berries, which significantly increases the marketability of the variety, I would like to say a few words about the taste itself. He's exceptional! Raspberries are very aromatic, sweet, juicy, just melt in the mouth, but dense enough to provide good transportability.
In terms of ripening, this is an early remontant, it manages to give almost all of its harvest before frost. Fruiting begins in late July and early August, and ends in October.
The plant is distinguished by powerful erect bushes up to 1.6 m high. The raspberry shoots themselves, covered with rare small thorns, grow very close and compact, which greatly simplifies their care and harvesting. The leaves on them are large, dark green, wrinkled. The plant gives enough root growth, which makes it quite promising when grown for seedlings.
It is advisable to grow repairing varieties of raspberries, in particular the Red Guard, leaving 10-12 shoots per running meter. With this scheme, the yield is very high and amounts to 5.0 - 5.5 kg. In addition, the shoots branch well, the fruiting zone makes up more than half of them.
The amount of the crop is also influenced by the composition of the soil in the area set aside for cultivation. Loose fertile soil rich in nutrients and trace elements is most preferred. Plants are also very responsive to good lighting. At the end of the season, the branches that bear fruit are cut out at the root and destroyed, along with the diseases and pests that have accumulated in them.
Summarizing all the qualities listed above, such as a uniform, beautiful and very large berry, a rich sweet raspberry taste, excellent yield and transportability, resistance to major crop diseases, as well as early ripening, we can safely call the Red Guard one of the best domestic remontant varieties, which confirmed by numerous positive and sometimes just admiring reviews of gardeners!
Author: Maxim Zarechny.
