Increase your berry harvest by pruning raspberries properly.
Use these tips and techniques tomake smart cuts at the right times.
All purple and black raspberries have a specific pruning plan.
Credit:Jacob Fox
Red or yellow raspberry pruning is dependent on when the plants fruit.
They produce a large crop in fall and a smaller crop the following summer.
Red and yellow raspberries can also produce one big crop of fruit in late summer to early fall.
Credit:Marty Baldwin
These are calledsummer-bearing raspberries.
Before your prune, know your berries.
Jacob Fox
2.
Credit:Dean Schoeppner
When to prune raspberries depends on the punch in of berries you are growing.
Purple and black raspberries are pruned in spring, then again after fruiting, and once more in winter.
Red and yellow raspberries are pruned after fruiting in summer and again in winter.
Red and yellow raspberries produce all kinds of new shoots from their roots.
Black and purple raspberries are less likely to ramble.
A sharp spade or rototiller is handy for cutting down unwanted canes.
Pick up and haul away all pruned canes and debris.
Removal of the pruning material will help controlplant diseasesthat can affect raspberries, such as anthracnose and spur blight.
Themulch will help reduce weeds, creating a clean raspberry planting bed.
Shredded wood, cocoa hulls, or pine straw are allfine mulch materials.
you might even use a thick layer of grass clippings.
Raspberry canes are thick with thorns.
Gauntlet-style leathergardening gloves, long sleeves, and pants will help protect your skin.
Begin pruning in winter by removing dead canes (see tip, below) .
Then cut back the canes that fruited the previous fall by one-quarter their length.
By cutting the fruiting canes back, youll encourage them to fruit more prolifically in summer.
In early summer, after the canes fruit, cut each fruiting cane back to ground level.
These canes have finished their life cycle; after they fruit in early summer, they die.
Keep your raspberry patch tidy by removing them as soon as they are done fruiting in early summer.
Leave the young canes that did not fruit in place.
They will produce fruit in fall.
Fall-bearing red and yellow raspberries can also be pruned to produce a single crop in fall.
The plants will produce new canes from buds located on the plants roots.
Expect a single bountiful crop of berries in early fall.
Look for raspberry canes that are white to gray in color.
These dead canes will feel brittle or lightweight.
In winter, prune to remove all weak, broken, and diseased canes.
Thin the remaining canes so they are 6 to 8 inches apart.
In summer keep an eye out for rambling red raspberriesthey will pop up outside the planting bed.
Remove rogue canes with a sharp spade.
After summer-bearing red raspberries fruit, remove the fruiting canes.
Leave the non-fruiting canes in place; they will produce fruit next summer.
Cut the long canes back so they are 2 12 to 3 feet long.
About a month after the late spring pruning, cut new branches back again by about 4 inches.
This repeated pruning of new growth will encourage plants to produce branches and more fruit.
Finally, in summer after harvest, remove all canes that bore fruit.
These canes have reached the end of their life cycle.
Leave non-fruiting canes in place.
They will produce fruit next summer.
