Raspberry canes what to do?

[lmayhow]

Come on then you lovely people I have another question please.....

I have sorted my Onions and Garlic for the winter so thank you for help.

There is raspberry canes in situ it has wooden stakes and netting already in place but is over grown with weeds and grass. I started by pulling up and cutting grass to the best of my ability assuming that the canes are summer because no raspberries now?

Summer are the whole cut down year two as they only fruit on second year canes? I have caught a few canes on my way round and they are extremely brittle so I am guessing maybe more than two years old?

Unsure whether to cut the lot down to ground level get the weeds and grass out properly and then see what happened next year? Or leave in situ weed as best I can then look at them in the summer?

We all like a few photos so I have added a couple for kicks....



Thank you!

[WendyC]

I would dig out the canes you want and heel them in somewhere else for the time being. Summer fruiters should have at least one cane per plant for each section. They will be the shiny brown ones in your photo. Then you are free to dig out all the tangled weeds, manure it, set in new posts, perhaps rearrange the layout? Then you can plant the saved plants back. If there is any evidence of bindweed etc, you may even want to wash the roots to remove as much as you can. Good luck. After photo please.

[lmayhow]

would putting them in pots over the winter work please WendyC? Not so sure about the weeds yet will definitely keep you all updated next week...

thank you

[happyhumph]

Pots should be ok but have a tendency to dry out & blow over in the wind!

[Elfeda]

I had summer raspberries in same state, and it was not that bad to weed that area.

I would remove few canes as part of thinning summer raspberries and do weeding slowly and mulch it to stop the weeds as much possible. for some reasons I haven't found the weeds so deep.

[ESBkevin]

Wendy has it right.

When I got my patch the old canes were in weeds and someone had kindly strimmed it off canes and all. Dug them up and removed bindweed, replanted to a new bed and then dug over and cleared the old bed. First years crop after moving was impressive, second year on correct prunning not so impressive! When lifting them you can separate and create more canes if you wish, it does seem hard to kill them.

[Snadger]

You can tell the dead, old canes because they are...........er.........dead and old. If you want fruit next year i would dig the whole lot out as 'long canes', get rid of the dead and replant in weed free area without any pruning, and a bit of support..

[lmayhow]

Thank you everyone for info much appreciated...