So far it has been a good November to be working outside. This has given us a lot of time to catch up on fall gardening chores.
One of those fall chores is cutting back your “Fall Raspberries”. By fall raspberries I mean varieties that have been specially selected to bear fruit from September until the first hard frost.
Years ago, raspberries were only available in the summer. We still see summer raspberries offered for sale, but the labor involved has made them quite a bit more expensive to grow. They had to be pruned at just the right time and were often trained to a wire system, much like grapes. The canes produced fruit only on the second year’s growth, then they died shortly afterward. So you had to get into the patch and cut out the old canes one at a time while leaving the new canes to grow for next year’s crop.
Which brings us to the topic of today’s discussion: cutting back your fall bearing raspberries. All you need to do is simply, cut off the canes, pick them up and dispose of them. That’s all there is to it. No critical timing, no trying onto wires…see how much easier they are than the older summer raspberries. This method can, however reduce your total crop yield by 25% or more.
If you have just a small patch, you can use your hand pruners to do the job like I’m preparing to do here:
If your patch is too big to do by hand, a weed-whacker with a metal brush-cutting blade works great.
A patch of fall raspberries, if not cut back in the fall will revert to an ever-bearing habit of growth. That is to say, they will begin bearing fruit in the summer and continue again in the fall. Some gardeners prefer to pick raspberries earlier in the season rather than waiting to pick their crop in the fall.
Cut off the canes near ground level.
If you have a place to do it, burn the cut-offs, they can harbor disease which may infect next season’s growth.
One last thing, if you can’t get to them right now, they can be cut down any time during their dormant season…all the way up until March.
Bob
I find that with my raspberry patch, machetes work great for cutting down the canes. I like to use a bill hook machete with a sickle hook on the end to pull the vines toward me. You can cut the canes into digestible chunks for the compost pile as well, just make sure the pile gets hot enough to fully destory any diseases.
Comment by jjtraveler70 — November 26, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
JJ, you make a couple of good points, machetes make a great tool for cutting down raspberries. You can compost the cut canes but getting the compost pile to heat up enough to destroy all disease organisms may not be practical for everyone. That’s why I recommend burning.
Bob
Comment by Bob — December 1, 2009 @ 12:07 pm
I find that with my raspberry patch, machetes work great for cutting down the canes. I like to use a bill hook machete with a sickle hook on the end to pull the vines toward me. You can cut the canes into digestible chunks for the compost pile as well, just make sure the pile gets hot enough to fully destory any diseases.
Comment by Emily — June 2, 2010 @ 9:26 pm
I love using machete in the garden. It´s pretty handy tool for cutting the bushes, chopping the wood and many other activites. I think it´s quite underestimated tool.
Comment by Gardener — July 9, 2015 @ 5:00 pm