Inherited raspberry canes

Sam76

My neighbour has given me his raspberry canes that he no longer wants. They are a mixture of summer & autumn fruiting varieties. I am not sure which are which & thus which ones to prune once planted. Should i just prune them all this year and see what happens, then label them?

Zoomer44

That sounds like a good plan. 

The summer fruiting one's won't fruit but the autumn fruiting one's will, I'm confident if that's the wrong and it's the other way round someone will come along and post....

BobTheGardener

Cutting them all down to the ground in feb is the safest way to reliably sort them into types.  The ones which then grow new canes which go on to fruit later this year can be safely labelled as autumn-fruiting types.  The rest will be summer fruiting types and won't fruit this year - all of those new canes will bear fruit the summer after next.

If you don't cut any of them back, any old autumn type canes may produce an early crop which will often come at the same time as the summer type, so you won't be any wiser as to which are which, although the autumn ones should push up a few new canes which fruit at the normal later time but not always.  In essence, best cut them all down after planting.

Sam76

Thanks guys