Raspberries aren’t hard to prune, that is if you have the “regular” kind and can recognize older, dead canes. If this sounds like your raspberry patch, prune off the old canes at the base after they’re finished fruiting.
That’s about what I knew of raspberries, until I read a column by Cass Turnbull, pruner extraordinaire and founder of PlantAmnesty.
It becomes more complicated, she writes in the group’s latest newsletter, if you have a newer ever-bearing or fall-bearing variety. She called them “confusion-bearing” raspberries. These have one- and two-year-old canes that produce berries in the summer on last year’s bottoms and fall on this year’s tops.
Her advice: do what’s obvious. Cut out the finished tops and the canes that look dead top and bottom. Leave the live looking stuff.
Genius. Thanks, Cass.
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