Yes. But apparently the advantage of fall pruning is less winter kill as it decreases dessication by way of the leaves. At least this is my explanation of better fall pruning results obtained by Nourse in their comparison of fall to spring pruning. I now strip off leaves from blackberries even on the remaining parts of cut canes to see if this helps.

I get worst winter kill on blackberries but always loose a lot of my fattest canes of my raspberries as well.

Thanks!

Do you think I should try for a mid winter prune then? Or just wait until March Harvestman?

I prune my raspberries in the spring after they start to leaf out. That makes it easy to see where to cut off the dead ends. You don't want to cut off too much if you're trying to get two crops out of them. I don't get winter kill, just the normal dead ends from where it fruited last fall.

Hman,

As I read the article, although ambiguous of the cause, the dessication doesn't necessarily come from the leaves.

My thought is the dessication comes from the longer canes. I think the longer canes have more difficulty pushing water though all that length when the canes are frozen. I've noticed the canes on my Triple Crown seem to die out at the ends first, which would be in accordance with that theory. Also my leaves seem dead by the time the bitterest cold arrives, which would seem to imply stripping leaves wouldn't help much.

After reading the article, I wanted to try pruning my canes last Dec., but never got to it. I'm sure this will result in some dead canes this Spring, as is normally the case. Still, I wonder if the dead Spring canes will equal the material I would have pruned off in Dec.

Nourse Farms are some pretty experienced folks, so my guess is a person would be better off following their recs. and pruning in Dec. Perhaps I can get it done next year.

Does this technique work on the 'summer bearing' raspberries? Or the 'ever bearing'? Or both?

I have Lathan (an old Summer Bearing) variety, and would like to extend the season as much as possible.

Olpea, stripping leaves is standard procedure to decrease dessication during fall planting of apple trees. Cornell has recommended it and it is a standard technique used by nurserymen when doing summer transplanting of large trees.

Blackberries hold their leaves deep into winter here so at the very least I figure stripping them probably won't hurt and I will know by late spring if it helped. I'll let you know.

Keep, if length of the canes causes dessication with or without leaves, which I assume they would, than you might as well prune now and get most of the benefit.

All I can add is that my Lathams and Royalty suffer extremely little dieback in winter temps. down to the zero to -8 deg. range, those low temps. have not lasted for more than a week since they were planted a few years ago. My canes aren't bent over with the tips covered, they stand where they grew. Also, all of the leaves come off by their selves by late Nov., sounds like a may be lucky in that respect.