Help pruning raspberries

16 years ago

I have baba berries that are entering their third year. The first year we only had 2 of 10 survive (our own fault b/c we didn't get them in the ground right away and I think the roots dried out). Last year the plants grew like crazy and we trellised them. The grew so much that we were able to fill in all the plants that died and then some. They grew over the trellis, landed where they pleased and rooted. I had a hard time pulling them even from my adjacent garden because I was so desperate for fruit. I removed the few 2 year canes in the fall, but I have have put off pruning because I have no idea what I am doing. I have read some fruit books, but I am still petrified of messing them up. I started the job today and I think it went pretty well, but I'd appreciate any input.

My main questions are what to do about 1)canes that have extensive branching and 2) canes that went over the trellis and rooted.

1)In all the books the pruned canes rise from the ground and drape gracefully over the wire. Not so here. Should I be pruning to keep the canes from extensive branching? If I have a cane that has 4 or 5 large branches will that be detrimental to the overall fruit production? We added another row of raspberries last year (Carolina). We are going to trellis them this year, but I have noticed that some of the plants have alot of branching and I wonder if I should prune those to try to get a single vertical cane.

2)The baba grew over the trellis and then rooted all over the place. We pulled the ones that were far from the patch, but left the rest. Now they are an knotty mess of thorny branches. Most of the canes that rooted this way do not go straight into the ground but instead snake along the ground for a few or several inches before rooting. I am worried that this might lead to disease. Should I pull all of those? I don't know if I am emotionally capable since those are about half our baba canes and I REALLY want raspberries.

I took some pictures today that I will try to post in the morning.

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Comments (3)

gentryjj
Original Author
16 years ago
Unpruned baba canes
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A section that I pruned
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The branching that I am wondering if I should prune to a single cane
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I am attaching the canes to the wire with half-length twisty tie. Does this look ok?
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I'd appreciate any input and thanks for your time!
Jennifer
myk1
16 years ago
Since you replied to yourself this isn't going to stay up top.
I don't think Baba Berries are raspberries and don't know if that's how they are pruned. So while this may not be the best answer at least it will move it up for you. (I haven't had cultivated raspberries for a while and when I did they were everbearing. I do still have wild raspberries and I'm working on refreshing my memory to get another everbearing patch going. I don't think I'm wrong, but I could be.)

I think you're a wee bit crazy planning to tie the canes up. That would be a lot of constant painful work.
Put up two wires and sandwich them if one wire isn't working for you.

For non-everbearing, cane comes up, grows for a year, fruits the following summer. Sometimes they die and make pruning easy (deadwooding), sometimes they branch. They may still produce on the branches but as you found out when the branches touch down they root. Left to their own devices this ends up creating the proverbial inpenatrable bramble patch which has saved the life of many rabbits. If they neither die or branch you will pick up on the looks of the older canes and know which ones to remove.

So cut the whole branching cane off at the ground, it has done it's most productive work. Or leave it and get the berries it produces and use it to expand the bed.

Cut the rooted canes off at the new plant.
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ericwi
16 years ago
We have everbearing red raspberries, but I don't remember the variety. Every fall, I cut the patch down to 10 inches, and put the canes on our compost pile. When the patch is all cleaned up, I cover it with about 8 inches of shredded maple tree leaves. We have a mature maple tree, and the leaves have to go somewhere, so they go on the raspberry patch. When spring rolls around, the patch comes up, right through the layer of leaves. It takes three months, April, May, & June, for the patch to recover from being cut down the previous fall. We will see blossoms in July, and the first fruit in late July or August. We continue to see fruit 'till mid October. When I cut down the patch in November, all of the leaf mulch from the previous year has disappeared. I'm not sure if this method would work with baba berries.