Raspberries are an easy to grow fruit that is well suited for the home garden. At this time, summer-bearing raspberries are through producing and a few of the fall-bearing varieties are starting to ripen. Now is the perfect time to renovate your summer-bearing raspberries. Renovating will help ensure a good crop of easy to harvest berries for next summer.
Left unchecked, a summer-bearing raspberry patch can become an unproductive, unattractive thicket in a short time. In addition, the decreased sunlight and air circulation that results from overcrowding increases the likelihood of fungal disease, including anthracnose and spur blight.
To renovate, simply remove all canes that have already produced fruit and then thin all broken or weak first year canes. A common recommendation is to leave four to six canes per foot of row. It is tempting to reduce the height of the first year canes at this time but avoid doing so until next spring when you can determine the amount of winter die-back. If pruning is done in the spring, do not remove more than 25% of the living cane to avoid lowering the yield.
After thinning the old, weak, and broken canes, check your row width. Raspberry rows should be no wider than 12 inches in order to maximize light penetration and air circulation. Remove canes that are growing outside of the row to keep the plants healthy and easy to harvest.
With a little care you will have healthy and fruitful raspberry plants next summer. If you have questions about raspberries please call me at the University of Minnesota Extension office, Clay County at 218-299-7338, 1-800-299-5020 or by email nels1657@umn.edu. Check out our website at https://local.extension.umn.edu/local/clay More information about raspberry care can be found at: https://z.umn.edu/raspberrycare Source: Carl Hoffman, University of Minnesota Extension educator (retired).
