Caring for 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. I currently have large patches of red raspberries, golden raspberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, 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. This week, my outdoor grounds crew tended the raspberries.
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. Now that we have finished picking the berries, it’s time to do a little maintenance to make sure they remain healthy and productive for next season.
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- Here is what these raspberry bushes looked like in July – 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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- Here are the bushes this week before we started pruning them. Raspberries are unique because their roots and crowns are perennial, while their 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 berry bushes.
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- The wire can be tightened or loosened depending on the need.
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- Dawa 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. Leaving them unpruned also 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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- Canes that produced berries in the previous year will be dead, so Dawa also cuts these all back to the ground.
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- Here is an old 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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- 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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- Dawa then makes sure all the green growing canes are placed in between the wires, so they do not droop down to the ground.
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- The wires are drawn across the rows at various heights, so the canes are well-supported.
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- Look closely, and there are still one or two berries still attached to their stems.
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- All of the trimmed branches are placed on a tarp and easily carried to a pile that will be chipped later. 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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- The long canes will be left to continue growing until winter, when we prune the most vigorous canes down to about 24-inches tall.
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- Using one of our STIHL backpack leaf blowers, Dawa goes up and down the aisles to blow any debris. We repurposed leftover black weed cloth to keep weeding down to a minimum in this area.
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- This area looks 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.
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