Raspberry is an aggressive shrub that quickly occupies the entire area allotted to it and is constantly trying to expand its possessions. If you do not prune the bushes and remove excess shoots, the raspberry grows quickly into impenetrable thickets. Fortunately, pruning raspberries is a simple matter, and it must be done at a very convenient time: after harvesting and a little in the fall.
Raspberry pruning goals in the fall
It would seem, why come to the raspberry with a pruner at all? Nobody does this in the forest, and there are enough fragrant healthy berries for both the forest inhabitants and people who come with buckets and baskets. However, it is worth remembering what area of forest thickets you need to collect and how much time should be spent to collect a raspberry bucket. Yes, it grows by itself, but it grows small and there is not much of it per square meter. And in the summer cottage, we want to get large berries and more, but we allot the garden well if it’s a quarter of a hundred, and usually even less. Therefore, you have to take care of raspberries: water, fertilize, loosen, prepare for winter and cut out all unnecessary on time.
The berries in the forest will grow delicious, but without care they will be small, there will be few
On an ordinary perennial raspberry, each shoot lives for two seasons: appearing in the spring, grows intensively, remaining flexible and green until the fall, preparing for the fact that next year it should give a berry crop and then dry and die. If you do not touch it, it can stand still in a dried state for another year, or even more, littering the plantation. In the end, it will fall and turn into mulching material. It seems to be good, but the fact is that most of the time during this time different bad bugs, spiders, pests of raspberries and our competitors for the crop have time to settle in the shoot. And even different sores. So it turns out that the main reason for the need for pruning raspberries is clear to us. Thawed shoots must be removed on time.
The second reason lies in the ability of the raspberry bush to give numerous new shoots: more than the root system can feed. No, the extra ones, shoots, of course, will not die of their own death, but they will give very few berries, and they will require a lot of nutrients. Thus, the second reason to take a pruner in hand is the excessive thickening of raspberry bushes, the need for their elementary thinning. So that really strong shoots, striving to give a high yield, had enough food, water and sun for this, so that the bushes can be ventilated, so that all unnecessary viruses and bacteria do not accumulate in the raspberry. But how do we ourselves make our way through the spiky thickets with a bucket, picking berries? Therefore, it turns out that by trimming, we care about the health of not only raspberries, but also our own.
This raspberry will have something to work on.
Many varieties of raspberries, if you give them a lot of food and drink, grow in the form of very tall bushes. Well, why do we pick berries from a stepladder? After all, a raspberry of two meters height and above is simply inconvenient. In addition, very long shoots do not have enough strength to produce crops on all their branches, along the entire height of the stem. Yes, and there will be few of these branches, if the stem will tend upward. And the third reason is clear: shortening too long shoots and forming a bush in order to form lateral branches and get berries from them. By correct pruning, we do not destroy the future crop, but, on the contrary, make it richer.
Many pruning is carried out only in October, in order to still have time to find warm days. But it turns out that the main work in the ordinary (not repair) raspberry can be done much earlier! Thawed shoots should be cut immediately after collecting the last berries; obviously superfluous, weak shoots to remove all summer, as they appear (after all, it quickly becomes clear whether he wants to grow big and strong or will only be tormented!). The tops of powerful shoots can be trimmed as soon as they become higher than the head, and this also does not happen at all in the fall. Therefore, "autumn pruning" is a rather arbitrary name; in autumn you can leave only the finishing touches of this action. Apply these strokes about three weeks before the first frost.
Technique for Autumn Cutting Raspberries
Proper pruning of raspberries in the fall dramatically reduces the laboriousness of caring for raspberries in the spring and summer of next year and significantly increases the quality and quantity of berries picked. If in the winter the bushes left containing no more than ten, and preferably 5-6 strong annual shoots no more than two meters tall, the raspberry tree will only be grateful to us for this. If you can freely walk between the bushes to pour humus, lightly work with a hoe, patching it in the ground and loosening, and when berries appear, you can comfortably sit around the bush, which means we worked as a pruner for good reason. In the spring, it will only be necessary to eliminate the consequences of a harsh winter by cutting the frozen tops and postponing cutting tools until a new unnecessary shoot emerges.
If in autumn we did everything right, in spring only healthy twigs will appear in the raspberry bush and in the right place
So, let’s imagine that in the summer you didn’t cut anything out in raspberries, and here came September (and maybe already October), and instead of a cultural plantation you see a forest of variegated spiny stems. What to do?
- Find a good pruner. Most likely, you should have it somewhere. For raspberries, no costly options are required, with tricky mechanisms, its stems are easy to cut. The main thing is that the sector is healthy and sharp. And of course clean. If suddenly it all lies in the barn in the ground and rust - wash, clean, grind. If creaks - where necessary, grease.
For raspberries, the simplest but most convenient pruner for your hand is suitable
- Inspect the overgrown carefully and understand where to start. If it’s difficult to climb into them, you will have to work “in layers”, performing all the trimming work at once. If the situation is not so sad, and you can still squeeze between the bushes, it is better to start with the removal of last year's, that is, the stems that have begot off. They are easy to recognize even for a beginner: they are not green, but brown. Not elastic, but almost dry, woody. Cut last year's shoots as close to the ground as possible, trying not to leave stumps (pests can live in them!). Most likely, cutting out old shoots, you will also meet young ones, but obviously worthless (crooked, weak, etc.). If handy - under the knife immediately. Yes, and, of course, wear gloves first. And better - tarp gauntlet on the left hand, and nothing can be worn on the right hand, with secateurs.
Thawed shoots are easy to distinguish from young, green
- If you have successfully dealt with last year's shoots, proceed to the next stage. Probably, while walking through the thickets, bushes completely separated by 70-80 centimeters were completely isolated. If the situation is more complicated and the forest remains, you have to decide what we will now consider to be bushes. In each bush, no more than a dozen of the strongest young shoots should be left, but 5-6 are enough. So, where there is the largest clot of such stems, we will make a bush. Everything between the bushes is cleaned to the very soil. Of course, that shoot that grows between the bushes can be transplanted to another place - this is one of the types of planting material in raspberries. After choosing the best specimens, you can carefully dig them together with the roots and lay a new bed.
It’s not worth leaving a lot of such overgrowth between the bushes, but it will be just right to transplant it to a new place
- Now the bushes are isolated. We look even more carefully. Stems with signs of disease or pests should not remain in the winter. For a completely inexperienced gardener, there are two main guidelines in the search for such stems and urgent sending them to the fire. This is a swelling on the stem (a kind of spherical growths, are at any height, but more often - closer to the ground). And this is the so-called panicle: the stem branches into many small branches, going in the form of a broom. Such shoots are not just sick, they indicate that raspberries are likely to have to be treated. But this is a different story. Along with diseased shoots, we cut and obviously broken.
There is no place for such stems in the raspberry bush: dangerous pests settled in this bloating
- Cutting out diseased and broken shoots, we again consider how many healthy people remain in the bush. Remember that it is advisable to leave 5-6 pieces, up to a maximum of ten. And if they are already less? Well, what to do, launched a berry. We will be corrected next year. In the meantime, see if all of the healthy should be left. If good shoots intertwine with each other and rub, it is necessary to remove those that are worse. If the shoot "from the pot is two vertices", or rather, a total of 40 centimeters tall, and 3 millimeters in diameter, there is nothing for him to do on the garden. There will be no sense from him. Cut out.
- And almost the last: pruning long branches. How long - depends, of course, on the variety and climatic characteristics. Someone and 1.5 meters seem a lot, and someone taller. In general, a clear answer cannot be given, but 2 meters is just too much. In addition, the tops of the longest shoots, most likely, will still freeze in the winter, and in the spring they will have to be cut out one way or another: they very rarely manage to fully mature before winter, and if they do, they give weak buds with poor fruiting. Therefore, shearing “as a measure and beauty will tell”, but at least we shorten it by 15-20 cm. By the way, it was also better to do this in August, and new branches would have appeared on the stem.
Often at the end of summer, young tops even bloom. So, they won’t survive the winter, and they need to be cut off as soon as possible.
- It remains to decide where to put what was cut out. If you have full confidence that there are no diseases and pests in your raspberry, you can cut the pruner into pieces (10-20 cm, as your hand takes) and scatter it under the bushes. There will be a wonderful mulch and shelter of the roots from frost (even a bear makes a lair in the old forest raspberry!). But more often than not, there is no certainty in the full health of the plants, and you have to send the cut to the fire. Here you need to be careful. The stems and leaves of raspberries burn beautifully and the heat gives a lot.
- If you live in regions with a harsh climate, then closer to the ground, the remaining stems in each bush should be bundled, slightly tied and bent as low as possible, but not broken. Snow is the best shelter from frost. Well, in the northernmost regions for the winter they should also be covered with non-woven material (lutrasil, spanbond).
The most common mistake when pruning raspberries is to leave stumps. And the rest is difficult to make a mistake - we make it convenient and beautiful
If raspberry care is carried out systematically, then you are already an experienced gardener, and our advice is useless to you. Most likely, you appear in the raspberry with a pruner at least once a month and maintain it in perfect order, leaving about as many shoots on healthy bushes as there were last year.
If the rules for pruning ordinary raspberries are quite simple, you can’t say the same about repair varieties: it is able to produce berries not only on two-year-old shoots, but also on annuals. Therefore, using the general approach, it is possible to accidentally cut out new shoots, as it is clear that they already had berries on them, and leave yourself without a solid part of the crop. Repair raspberries are cut later, even in November, because it pleases the owner with a harvest, albeit small, until the frosts. But often the pruning of the repairing varieties is completely transferred to the spring to see the results of overwintering.
Experienced gardeners cut two-year-old stems of remont raspberries under the root in the fall, but leave most of the shoots of this year, pruning them severely. The remaining stumps with a growth of 25-30 cm in the spring give new twigs and have time to give two crops. Although this, of course, depends on the climate of the region. Beginners are usually advised to cut all the stems “to zero” in the fall, without understanding: in the spring, new ones will have time to grow and yield. And maybe two, if the weather permits.
Video: raspberry pruning in the fall
Pruning raspberries is one of the most important stages in the cultivation of this healthy berry. Timely pruning guarantees not only a significant increase in yield, but also convenience in the care of the plantation. Performing it after the harvest, we help the plant gain strength for fruiting next year.
