Raspberry plants
- Thread starter chris282
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We were quite shocked by the speed at which raspberries spread!!
I'm far from experienced, but what we've found is they'll quickly grow into thickets and will rapidly throw up new shoots a fair distance away from the 'mother' plants.
I wanted lots of raspberries so we just let anything grow that wasn't encroaching on something else. We now have a huge thicket with lawn all around and we can just use the mower to keep it contained.
You certainly won't kill the plant or harm it by cutting them off (I don't think), but it just depends on how tightly you want to control your plants.
I'm far from experienced, but what we've found is they'll quickly grow into thickets and will rapidly throw up new shoots a fair distance away from the 'mother' plants.
I wanted lots of raspberries so we just let anything grow that wasn't encroaching on something else. We now have a huge thicket with lawn all around and we can just use the mower to keep it contained.
You certainly won't kill the plant or harm it by cutting them off (I don't think), but it just depends on how tightly you want to control your plants.
Ok thanks very much for your advice much appreciated I think I'll leave 1 and trim 1 as an experiment
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Yup, they'll send shoots up all over and run out into the lawn. And if any of the canes bend down and touch the ground there is a chance they'll set roots and make another mother plant.
You will also have to get adept at identifying last year's fruited canes in late winter when the plant is dormant. Cut those dead canes out before it is sending out new growth or setting fruit so you're not damaging new stuff or knocking off fruit.
But, @chris282, are you expecting to train this as a vine up on a fence? What I know as Raspberries send up new canes each year and each cane only lives 2 years. Year 1 the cane grows, year 2 it fruits, year 3 it's dry dead twig. This is why there's a bunch of new canes growing from one mother plant and it's running all over.
You will also have to get adept at identifying last year's fruited canes in late winter when the plant is dormant. Cut those dead canes out before it is sending out new growth or setting fruit so you're not damaging new stuff or knocking off fruit.
But, @chris282, are you expecting to train this as a vine up on a fence? What I know as Raspberries send up new canes each year and each cane only lives 2 years. Year 1 the cane grows, year 2 it fruits, year 3 it's dry dead twig. This is why there's a bunch of new canes growing from one mother plant and it's running all over.
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There is a bit of difference between summer and autumn fruiting varieties, the above applies to summer types. Autumn types will fruit on the same year's growth, so you can chop everything down to ground level when you prune.
Mr Yan is right, not a very suitable thing to pick for training as a vine on a fence.
I made the mistake of mixing mine in together so hard to know which are the autumn and which are the summer types. However, I *THINK* we've established that we can simply cut out any cane that has already had fruit on it - which thus far seems to be easy to establish.
We're following an approach (yet to find out how well it works) of having two wires running along the raspberry row. Push the canes that will bear fruit next year to the back and the fruiting canes to the front. For reasons explained, it might be difficult to figure it out with my setup but it does seem a good way to keep things organized.