Cutting raspberries back?
ecokid
Posts: 138
in Fruit & veg
I know the conventional wisdom is to cut the raspberry cane back in the autumn to about a foot in length. However, I normally leave a few old cane of about 3 feat as I find that these tend to sprout and flower earlier, which seems to give me an earlier harvest. I then tend to get a second flush from the new shoots from the root stock later in the summer. I'm just wondering whether doing this diminishes my second flush of fruit from the new shoots due to the older cane blocking out the light?
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I presume you have autumn fruiting varieties? if so then I also cut some down to the ground and leave some about half their length. Earlier fruiting varieties fruit on last years new growth and shouldn't be pruned until after picking fruit.
Last edited: 27 May 2016 18:30:21
All autumn fruiting raspberry canes should be cut back to soil level in February......the reason being they fruit on canes produced on the current year's growth.
Summer fruiting raspberries produce fruit on growth produced in the previous year. So these should be pruned in autumn or after fruiting has finished.
Remove to ground level all canes that have fruited this year and choose & retain from the current year's (new) strong canes about 6in apart, to provide next year's fruit.....cut out remaining canes to ground level.
You are quite right David, but with autumn fruiters, you can get an earlier crop if you wish, by "half pruning", I did this for many years with success. Of course if you have ample supplies of early fruiting ones, there's no need to.
Never tried that, tiger....but I'll will give it a go.
We can all learn from others experiences.
Last edited: 28 May 2016 10:51:54
I've done that in the past but the autumn crop is much reduced and sometimes the new canes which appear in spring don't fruit in the autumn as they should. If you also have summer fruiting types nearby it gets inceasingly difficult to see what is what so I went back to 'standard practice'.
I've tried it with my autumn fruiting Polka but I find the early fruit much smaller than the lovely large ones produced in the autumn, so now I cut them all down in February.
It's a technique called double cropping: http://www.crocus.co.uk/features/_/articleid.1444/