Did not prune the raspberries in their first year

[Habanero]

Hi,

Spring 2006 I planted a 12 foot row of raspberries which consists of a mixture of autumn (heritage, bliss) and summer varieties (leo, mailing jewel, red setter etc) and I did get a better than expected crop in their first summer. However, I have not yet pruned any of the canes so I am wondering what I should do? I was tempted to leave the autumn varities unpruned to see what they would do this coming summer/autumn. It seems a shame to prune these autumn ones as they grew so well (about 5 foot). I know the summer varities are meant to be pruned on the canes that just fruited but now I do not know which canes these were!

If you don't cut out the old fruiting canes what is the main problem? Does the plant waste energy in the old canes that cannot fruit again anyway? I assume this applies to both summer and autumn varities.

Also, is a 12 foot row genereally considered suitable to provided a decent yeild for 2 people? I want to make jam, eat them fresh and may be have a go at some raspberry wine if I have an access, though I expect I will need to wait a few years until the canes are productive enough? As a guide I plante about 12 - 15 canes.

Thanks for any tips!

[valmarg]

Where do I begin?

The Summer fruiting varieties need to have this year's fruiting canes cut out, and this year's new canes tied in to produce next year's fruit. If you leave the old canes in they may produce fruit next year, but of very small inferior quality - so cut them out.

Autumn fruiting varieties need to be cut back to ground level in the Spring. You could leave a couple of plants for early fruit, but as you have Summer fruiting and Autumn varieties, it is probably not worthwhile.

We have about a 12' row of Joan J Autumn fruiting variety, and for the two of us we have about five large bags of open frozen fruits, and plenty of pots of jam. We also had several 'puddings' using raspberries throughout the Summer.

Hope that helps.

valmarg

[Alison]

You should be able to tell which canes have fruited as it'll be the older wood and you can usually see the remenants of where they have fruited. Although you treat the summer and autumn types differently as explained above, you still should remove fruited spurs on both. If you leave a few it isn't critical but that's what you should do. In order to make it easy for yourself, people usually put summer and autumn fruiting types in different parts of the plot or at least make it easy to see which is which as it can be surprisingly difficult when there's no fruit on them!

[shirlthegirl43]

I have 3 rasp canes but don't know the variety. They fruited a little last year on shoots that came up in the spring. They then put up a runner each during the summer - these didn't fruit. Should I cut out the fruited spurs or leave them this year to see what happens?

[TPeers]

I'd cut out the canes that have fruited, any fruit they produce in 2008 will be of poor quality at best and the energy the plant uses to produce the fruit will be subtracted from the energy available to produce good fruit on the new canes. Also old wood is more prone to desease attack and you really don't want mosaic virus!

[shirlthegirl43]

Cheers for that, will do it later if I get a chance

[Habanero]

Thanks for your help everybody

This weekend I will try to identify all last years fruiting canes and cut them right back. I think some are obviosu and others not so obvious