Lessons from the Garden - Part 4 - Raspberry Pruning

This blog has been a long time coming, as I have more experience growing raspberries and this is my third year of pruning them differently. In this blog, written in June 2022, I referenced my initial learning, and link to several videos and other sources. I now have several years of experience pruning them differently, and thought I'd share the results.

What I've done differently are several things:

1. Leave the pruning until later in the winter. I now do it around President's Day, which is the same time I do my roses.

2. Leave canes for a second year. In the past I cut them all down to about a foot tall.

3. Amend the soil they are growing in. These beds have been in use for about 10 years and the soil level had dropped considerably.

I don't know about you, but I have found my best source of my own photos when I am searching on a specific topic is my Facebook page! I select my name, then search in my posts for key words. This process just now not only allowed me to find photos to download and include here, but gave me specific timelines of the various stages of raspberry cycles. The photo below was taken in June of 2023, so it shows they are in full production by that time. I just started finding ripe gold raspberries, and that timing is consistent with the last few years. When I pruned the old way, I didn't get raspberries until July at the earliest, so they are definitely starting to produce earlier.

Early 2023 crop

While I have definitely seen more raspberries and they have started growing earlier in the year, I don't exactly have the increase in production I was anticipating. At least last year, which I the one I remember best, I barely got enough to make a batch of jam. Sad! There are three things I could think of:

• Water (the raspberries are on a station that goes off twice a week for 10 minutes). There are plenty of emitters, since Randy and Kara ran 5-6 lines with built-in emitters when they originally constructed these beds, but my theory is that in the heat of the summer this might not be enough. This year I will be out in my garden more, tending flowers for Katelyn's wedding, so I plan to water it by hand more frequently.

• Soil - I tried amending the soil with my own compost and then tested the goat manure/straw combo. I learned that straw doesn't break down when it is on top of the soil, and I don't think I had enough compost to make a big difference. This year I sprung for commercial soil amendment, so hopefully that will help. There was also a large 4 o'clock plant growing in the bed with the red raspberries, which was competing for water and soil nutrition. I have been trying to get rid of it, but will have to try harder.

• Bugs - there was definitely something eating the vines last year, and that might have stressed the plants. I never did figure out what it was, but I will be on the look-out this year. I really need to start wearing glasses in the garden so I can see these tiny pests!

Here are a few photos from prior years. The first one shows the bug damage from last year. The second one shows the plants looking sad, but with a huge 4 o'clock plant thriving. The last one is from several years ago, when I first used my own compost. I grew red poppies mixed in with the raspberries, must have been some dormant seeds in the compost because I haven't had red poppies in the garden for many years!

For pruning methods, the new process isn't more work, it just requires more care. I cut off the very tops of the plants, then carefully select a few of the healthier canes from last year and leave them. The others I cut off at the base, or if they are far enough away from the main plant, I pull them out. See the photos below for examples. You definitely get branches on the 2nd year canes which grow raspberries, vs. just having berries at the top like I used to get. What I see now is an earlier crop on the branches, and then later in the summer, a second crop from berries at the top. In the past I was basically cutting off the part that could produce the first crop!

This year when I pruned, I was worried about being able to tell the 2nd year canes from the older ones, but the plants made it easy on me. The older ones were grey and nearly dead, while the ones from last year still had branches on them and looked much healthier.

Gold raspberries, anyone?

In the past, when I pruned and pulled, I would pot up the extra raspberry plants. It just goes against my philosophy to thrown anything away that might still grow. In the past, I've potted up well over 50 plants every year, and shared them with friends or at plant sales. Last year, I posted this picture on Facebook, offering gold raspberries, and ended up shared them with 7 different people! Between that and plant sales, I'd estimate that well over 30 people have planted raspberries that got their start in my yard. One woman told me her husband had been wanting to start a section of berries in their yard and my plants were what finally made him get around to it!

This year, I actually threw away rooted plants! I know, shocking, but I didn't plan to do a plant sale, and the more plants you have in pots, the more work it is to keep them watered. I am working on my "Flint gene" tendencies (that's what my family calls it when we have difficulty throwing anything away, in reference to my Mom's mom who was a hoarder). I think my tendency to keep stuff is just as bad in the garden as it is in the house. Luckily many people actually WANT free plants, so I am managing to get rid of what I have and not go too crazy potting up more.

One of the other things I've learned over the years is to keep the red and gold raspberries separated, both when I harvest them and the plants in the raised bed. The background is that when I started, I only had red raspberries, but at some point I picked up a bare root gold raspberry plant on sale at Friedman's. I planted it, but it didn't seem to do well, so I transplanted some of my own red raspberry plants into the same bed. But, when I potted them up for sale, it was hard to keep track of which plants were which. For several years, I would tie string on the red raspberry canes when they were in production, then pull those out when I pruned that winter. Hopefully not too many people bought a plant thinking it was one color and it produced the other!

You would think mixing the berries when picking them wouldn't be a problem, except my usual process is to freeze many of them and save them for jam. I learned that I like to keep them separate when I make jam, so that I can have all one color in each batch. It's a hassle to do that before or after freezing them, so I've learned to just keep them separate from the get-go.

Berries ready for the freezer

One more piece of learning, my Mom taught me that when freezing berries, it's best to do it in a single layer. That way you don't end up with a huge frozen chunk of berries, especially when making jam since you need a specific amount. I thought this was common knowledge until my neighbor asked me about it, so I'll share it here. The process I use, during high season when I am picking several baskets every few days, is to wash them and spread them in a single layer on a jelly roll pan, then after they are frozen I bag and label them and put them back in the freezer.

Of course, everyone probably knows if you plan to eat them fresh, don't wash them until right before you use them, since they go bad faster once they're wet.

Here's hoping for a bumper crop of raspberries this year!!! We usually have jam still in the pantry from the prior year when I start picking that fruit type again, and we are down to our last jar of raspberry jam. It's Ethan's favorite, so maybe I can convince him to help me pick. Plus he's tall, a real bonus when I have those 2nd year canes, high up off the ground in the raised bed. Happy berry season!