Kitchen Garden Forum

I was told that there is no need to net Autumn Bliss raspberries to keep the birds away. Does anyone know if this is correct?

I've never had problems from birds, but this year have had problems with the wind and weight of berries snapping branches.

Does anybody thin Autumn Bliss? Mine are in their third year and seem to produce too many shoots for their own good. They look perfectly healthy.

Hello Geoff
I thin my AB a little when the shoots are about 1-2 foot high. They do need some severe root pruning though - I try to keep my bed to about 18 - 24in wide - if you're not careful they will soon establish themselves in a thickly growing wide bed.

John

I've got a concrete path each side - maybe that's why they are so dense - nowhere to go!

We let all of our raspberries grow quite densely, just so that the birds can take the ones on the outside and the rest remain intact for us.

Our Autumn Bliss are in the fruit cage. I've certainly read that there is less of a problem with birds on late-fruiting raspberries because they don't expect to find that type of fruit so late in the year. I'm not sure that I believe it!
And yes, they are a very vigorous variety. I just have to be ruthless and say that if they grow outside the supporting wires, they're coming out. Don't be surprised if you get the odd shoot coming up on the far side of the concrete path. This even happens with other rasp variety - I had a couple of canes of Leo this year which burrowed under a concrete path and came up in the middle of our broad beans...