Usual song -- just bought the house this spring, existing, somewhat neglected razzle patch, and no idea what variety. When got house in March, there were sturdy, golden-brown, existing "last summer's" canes that needed thinned and were already starting to send out fresh growth, and needed to be cut back so we could install trellis. They've overcome the trimming with a vengeance, and as well, there are scads of fresh green canes coming up new this spring/summer. The once-sparse-looking patch is a jungle! There were tons of blossoms, the bees had a hey-day and I also observed bees settling in to spend the night on some of the small green berries a couple of weeks ago. The berries are just starting to ripen, lots and lots of fairly small, roundish ones. Anyway, back to my question: excuse my ignorance, but I'm thinking it'll be a lot easier and healthier for the ripening berries if I can shorten back some of the new green canes, as well as thin out wimpy-looking ones to keep only strong healthy ones. They really are crowding the bearing canes and branchlets and will make picking rather difficult. In fact, some of the fresh growth is apt to get damaged just accidentally while getting to berries, so I'd prefer to do the "damage" in a controlled fashion. Is that okay to do at this stage of the raspberry game? What are the pros and cons? Thanks for any advice...
I can't see your "patch" from here, but I don't think I'd touch the new green canes springing up. These are your "next year's" fruiting canes. I guess if you think you really have too many, you could thin them by removing some of the wimpier ones right to the soil level now...but I've never tried that myself. The only summer pruning I'm aware of is possibly topping those new canes at whatever you wish for convenience of harvesting next year...if happy they can climb well over 6 feet and maybe get hard to reach the berries. A pleasant result of living in raspberry heaven here on the west coast! Otherwise, just keep removing the old fruiting canes each winter to keep things clean and open...it's quite simple. Now about weeding the raspberry patch...that's the challenge in my experience :-(
Amen about the weeding! This morning I made my first venture into the raspberry jungle and you are right, some of the canes have shot up well over my head. But I'll get those berries when they are ripe, no fear...I had cut the bearing canes back to 4 feet in March and they just took off again this spring. I'm learning as I go and next year will try not to be so berry-greedy -- I think part of problem is leaving in too many of the new upshoots that branched off of original plants, for the area they have to grow in. Thanks for the input, Growest, I'll try your suggestion to weed out wimpy stalks and see how it goes. Thinking further on it, I suppose that topping the new stalks now will just cause them to send out laterals, which would exacerbate the original problem. Yes, this IS berry heaven...blueberry bushes will go in next! :^D
