Maintaining the Raspberry Bushes
Berry picking season is over now, so it's time to trim the old canes and branches back and get the bushes ready for next year.
I love growing berries and have been growing them for a long time. Here at my Bedford, New York farm, I grow patches of red raspberries, golden raspberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries, and currants. Many berries are best eaten raw, but they can be used in a variety of ways - as ingredients in jams and jellies, pies and tarts, and delicious summer juices. For the best yields from these plants, it's crucial to keep them well-maintained - they need to be pruned properly and regularly. Pruning produces larger berries in greater volumes. It also helps to control diseases that might otherwise spread through the berry patches. We do a more aggressive pruning in late winter or early spring before the foliage returns, but recently, my gardener Brian O'Kelly, trimmed the long canes and cut out any unproductive old and dead wood.
Here are some photos - enjoy.
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- I have several rows of raspberries on one side of my main greenhouse. They all produce so many fruits every summer because they are well-maintained through the year.
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- Here is what these raspberry bushes looked like in late June – full of sweet berries. Summer-bearing raspberry bushes produce one crop each season. The fruits typically start ripening in late June into July with a crop that lasts about one month.
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- Botanically, the raspberry belongs to the Rosaceae family, in the genus Rubus.
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- The raspberry is made up of small “drupe” fruits which are arranged in a circular fashion around a hollow central cavity. Each drupelet features a juicy pulp with a single seed.
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- The leaves of raspberry plants are light-green and spade-shaped. They are also toothed along the edges.
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- Flip the leaves over and healthy leaves will be a light greenish-silver color.
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- Here are the bushes before we started grooming them. Raspberries are unique because their roots and crowns are perennial, while the stems or canes are biennial. A raspberry bush can produce fruit for many years, but pruning is essential.
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- The upright posts are made of granite and they have heavy gauge copper wire laced through them to support the long canes.
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- The wire can be tightened or loosened depending on the need.
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- The copper wire is on both sides of the canes holding them up.
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- Brian first prunes all the old, weak, diseased, and damaged canes at ground level. Unpruned raspberry bushes will still grow, but won’t yield more berries.
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- He checks all the canes to make sure he cuts all those that are necessary. Leaving them unpruned makes them more prone to disease.
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- It’s good to keep the base of the bushes within a 12 to 18-inch footprint by also pruning out any suckers that poke up outside those parameters.
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- Here is an old, dead cane that already produced berries. It is brown in color.
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- The young canes are still bright green.
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- Brian stops for a quick photo. Pruning the berries takes some time, so we do it over a course of days in between other more time sensitive tasks.
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- There are a few fall berries, but not many.
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- Here is a pile of old canes cut from the plants. After this pile gets a bit bigger, it will be loaded onto one of our vehicles and taken to the compost yard.
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- The last step is to trim off the tops, so it looks neat and tidy. Here is one row all evenly cut on top.
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- It is important to use sharp tools in order to get consistently sharp cuts. It is also crucial to keep tools clean. Leaf sap quickly builds up on blades and clogs up the mechanisms making them less efficient.
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- This area looks so much better. The rows of raspberries now have wide aisles between them. A little care for these berry bushes will keep them producing delicious fruits for many years. It’s a good start to fall, and there is lots of work to do.
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