For a bumper crop of berries next year, cut off fall raspberry canes in late fall

Up until now it’s been a good November to be working outside. This has given us an opportunity to continue working on fall gardening chores.

One of those fall chores is cutting back fall raspberry plants.

Many years ago, raspberries were only available as summer-bearing plants. Some gardeners still grow summer raspberries, but these are not nearly as popular as they once were. Compared to fall-bearing varieties, the summer-bearing types are fussy to grow. They have to be pruned at just the right time and need to be trained to a wire system, similar to grapevines.

In the case of summer raspberries, the canes produce fruit only on the second year's growth. They then die back shortly afterward. So pruning those types of raspberries involves getting into the patch and cutting out the old canes one at a time while selecting replacement canes that will produce next year's crop.

With fall-bearing raspberries, all of that selective pruning is replaced by simply cutting back all of the canes all at once in the late fall.

Fall raspberries are actually ever-bearing types that are treated differently. Because they produce flower buds on both last year’s canes and on the current year’s new canes, they produce two smaller crops each season. So in that way, they are really not strictly ever-bearing in the literal sense.

To prune your fall-bearing raspberries, all you need to do is simply cut off all of the canes in your patch in the fall. It’s best to wait until the leaves drop from the canes before cutting back. This year’s mild November weather caused the leaves to hang on to the canes much longer than usual, almost until Thanksgiving.

Some raspberry growers say it’s OK to cut back right after harvest is ended by a hard frost. Others say wait until the ground is frozen before cutting back.

If you have a small parch, you can use a pair of prunes to cut each cane separately. With larger plantings, a weed-whacker with a metal brush-cutting blade works fine. Farmers with fields of raspberries use large mowers for cutting.

Cut the canes as close to the soil surface as you comfortably can. Some gardeners leave a short 1- or 2-inches long stub but that can lead to problems next year. You run the risk of buds left on the on the stem stubs sprouting next spring that will produce weak and unproductive canes.

Once they are cut, pick them up and dispose of them. That's all there is to it. No critical timing, no tying onto wires, you can see how much easier they are than the older summer raspberry types.

If you have a place to do it, burn the cut-offs — they can harbor disease that may infect next season's growth. Do not compost them at home, set them out with your regular trash collection.

A patch of fall-bearing 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 the following summer and continue again in the early fall.

Some gardeners prefer to pick raspberries earlier in the season rather than waiting to pick their crop later on, so they deliberately choose not to cut back the canes in the fall.

One last thing, if you can't get to your raspberry patch right now, the canes may be cut down any time during their dormant season all the way up until March.