SUMMER FRUITING RASPBERRY CANES

[Compo]

Hi all I have just refreshed this to see if anyone is able to add any more....

After a cracking harvest of summer raspberries my 3 foot wide and thirty foot long row of canes is looking a bit sorry, and I intend to set about it this weekend. The thicket is well populated now with lots of old and new canes. Am I right that I chop the old fruited canes (brown ones) and leave the new ones, should I trim them the new growth to a uniform height there is a lot of new growth and I am wondering if I should also thin the new canes out a bit. I will mulch them up with well rotted manure after wards, what do others do?


Compo

[Johnboy]

Hi Compo,
Sounds like that everything is getting a little over crowded. I think that by cutting out the old canes would not be sufficient and really if you have enough superior new canes it may be best to grub them all out, sort them ,and replant just the superior canes. It sounds like that you are growing them as a thicket and this generally leads to hundreds of smaller fruit which in my opinion are very hard to pick. You may get a better sized fruit by spacing them out and end up with the same weight of crop.
JB.

[Allan]

Johnboy, I do agree. My experienxce is that if you go down to single isolated canes you get much the same total crop but better quality and far easier to see them and to pick.
Allan

[Compo]

Can I get the same results by serious pruning of the cane's cutting down a few where there a lot, leaving the strongest straightest canes, and cutting down to the ground the dead and punier looking canes........diging out and replanting the best canes may be a task for which I do not have the time...?

Compo[/b]

[Compo]

Sorry to refresh this, can anyone help with further advice?

Compo

[Geoff]

You don't say if you have posts and straining wire. If you have I would use a good sharp spade down each side of the row to leave a row 18" max wide and throw everything else away. Then go along the row and cut out everything old and thin. Then when you can see what you have got go along the row again and select only the strongest to leave you a good cane every 4-6" then tie them in. No need to use fiddly bits of string on each cane. This is a bit hard to describe. Tie something like thin binder twine to an end post at a wire level, loop it round the first cane and the wire, then the second cane and wire, on the third do a half knot, fourth and fifth loop again, sixth a full knot. Join strings together until you can tie to the post at the other end. This way you space the canes out nicely along the row. Ideally you should have wires at 2, 3, 4 and 5 foot from the ground and tie to them all but just tying to 2' and 4' is probably OK, the wires without ties still give support. Really tall canes I would cut the top off at 6', perhaps also tie these individually to the top wire. An extra advantage of tying in, as well as ease of picking because the row is tidy and less damage from thrashing about in the wind, is that if you are late pruning another year and you are debating whether a cane is old or new if it is tied in it is old.