Please help my raspberries!
sarahgula2014
Posts: 1
My Husband and I moved from the States back to his childhood home in Ukraine this past winter. Here, for comparison, the climate is similar to Upstate NY. The old family house comes with a greenhouse, a huge garden, flower beds, and various fruit trees/plants. It's been quite a task getting them all back into shape this spring after years of neglect. Everything seems to be coming back well.....except for the raspberries. I can't figure out what to do with them! Apparently they've fruited well in previous years, according to our Grandmother (who still lives here as well, but hasn't really gardened for several years now due to age/health), but they seem completely dead to me with the exception of a few stragglers at the back edge of the patch. I pruned the tips back to about 5' high (Grandma's suggestion--apparently what she's done previously) earlier in spring, but it seems to me that all I've done was cut the tops off already-dead canes. What should I do? Clear out the patch and plant again? Or is there hope, and I just can't see it? I can't decide if there are new baby canes growing at the base of some of the old canes, or if they're just weeds. I'm completely new to berry canes--any advice greatly appreciated!
Posts
The stragglers at the back may be summer fruiting type, so probably best to leave them alone now. Everything that doesn't have new leaves on it now, cut down to ground. Mulch the area with well rotted manure if you can get it and then wait and see. Those leaves on the ground aren't raspberry shoots, but it's hard to see in the photos if there are any. I've no idea if it's still early for autumn raspberries to be showing in that climate - it may be. They grow very fast, so they may yet appear.
If the 'stragglers' flower and fruit this year, then they are 'summer fruiting' types. You should see new stems appear later in the year. In the autumn you cut down the ones that fruited this year and leave the new shoots as they will fruit next year. If you get new shoots from the rest this year and they flower and fruit this year, then they are 'autumn fruiting' and you repeat the same process next year - cut all of this year's stems down in Spring.
If nothing much comes up and you get no fruit off any, or not much, then those canes may be exhausted. They don't live forever - 10 years typically in one spot. In which case next winter dig them all out, and plant new ones if you want raspberries or something different if you don't.
No need to decide it all now. Wait and see
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”