Confused about everbearing raspberries

13 years ago

I planted 6 Autumn Britten and 6 Caroline everbearing red raspberries last spring. In the fall, I cut them off, maybe 8" tall. This year, the beds are completely filled with canes. I was looking forward to fresh red raspberries starting maybe mid to late August.

Unexpectedly, I've been picking a small amount of ripe raspberries for a couple of weeks now. Only from the Autumn Brittens. And only from a relatively small number of canes.

I'm confused. I understand that everbearers will produce berries early on 2nd year canes, but I cut all the canes down last fall. There were so few canes last year, I'm certain that I cut every last one down. I thought I had to work harder to get early summer berries. Sorting out first and second year canes. Pruning properly. Tying up branches, etc. On the other hand, only a small fraction of only one of the varieties are producing berries now.

Is this normal? Where did I get lost? Or is it really this simple to get early berries? If so, why are only a few canes producing early berries?

Thanks.

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Comments (7)

glenn_russell
13 years ago
Lsoh-
If the berries you're getting from the Autumn Britten are on shoots of the canes (basal canes) that you cut down in the fall, then that makes sense. My thinking here is that cutting them down to 8" isn't enough? I mow some of my ever-bearers, and then I don't get any early-crop berries. -Glenn
ericwi
13 years ago
We have everbearing red raspberries, but I'm not sure the variety. I cut them down to 8 inches in the fall, clean up the bed, and mulch heavily with shredded tree leaves. Some years we begin to get ripe fruit in July, but most years we have to wait 'till August. This year, the fruit came in early. Must be the weather, we did have some warm days back in April.
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Since you bumped and nobody replied yet... I'll give you my less than expert experience. I don't thin the canes at all. I nip the buds on them so they will branch, but no thinning. With the ones I have been growing for a few years (some mystery OSH variety which was labeled Bababerry but I suspect is more likely Heritage) they seem to do well this way. They start to get long and floppy enough to require more work around July, so that's when I scalp the longest vines and tie the rest together or to some convenient sage bushes so they won't look unattractive. Either way, they start to look pretty ragged and unattractive by November. (Remember, I'm in zone 10a, so my growing and fruiting season will be different from yours.) If you want to do any weeding, it's best to do it all in January-February, before the new growth, because once the new vines start coming in, it's a "prickly" business to get your hands deep in there. Well, it's prickly for me, because I let them grow as they please. One thing about everbearing raspberries is that the new canes don't sprout in the same place as last year's cane. In fact, I find new runners in strange places, like in cracks in the sidewalk and my lawn, yards from the bed. So they're not so well-behaved enough that you can count on them to stay organized the way you want. The USDA lists blackberries as an aggressive, invasive weed (!!), and having grown both blackberries and raspberries (their close cousin) I can see how they would reach that conclusion. They will easily take up a nomadic lifestyle and take over your backyard if you don't keep an eye on them.
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I've read a lot about everbearing pruning, but I'm still mixed-up. I live in Mid-Michigan. My fall harvest is getting ready to hit hard. I prune to the ground in early spring -- which gives the big fall harvest, but also a bigger risk of gray mold fruit rot because of cooler/wetter weather then. (Oddly I got some mid-summer fruit anyway.) I've only had my plot a few years, but the past couple years I've lost a third of my crop due to gray mold. I've been trying to fix things by thinning hard and improving ventilation. My main question is if I should prune out canes and large branches that have small buds on them right now. Are these no-hopers for fall fruit? If they're not going to bear soon then I'm happy to be rid of them because they just impede drying and ventilation for the others. The bees have been in the patch intensely for the past month. Maybe they've been pollinating hard and their work might still bear fruit this fall? FYI, I have a plot of 6 rows each 50 feet long. My plants are thinned to one per foot. They're wired up and most are heavy with fruit. My patch is in good, somewhat light soil, well-drained on high ground, but tall trees solidly hem it in 30 feet away on all sides. I need to optimize ventilation and drying, I can tell. I usually get lots of fruit all September and early Oct -- at first frost in mid-Oct things slow down and flavor fades. So my goal is to make sure the next month goes right. Right now 25% of fruit is becoming pink, the rest is smaller, whiter. In the past week I've noticed occasional leafy canes and large branches that have no fruit -- I've been pruning those out to improve ventilation. If the canes with little buds on them will turn into ripe fruit in the next month, I'll leave them. If they're no-hopers, I want 'em gone! If they're just "maybes" for beating the frost then I also can sacrifice them. They're not crowding the others too much, but I can tell that fewer is better.
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franktank232
13 years ago
Check them again...i see my Caroline has all kinds of little batches of tiny flowers starting to come out. I think the berries that i'm eating are from last years canes i didn't cut down, while these new flowers are from this years growth.
iowajer
13 years ago
I think it's interesting that this topic came up, because I have the same thing going on with my Heritage patch (I say patch because I have yet to get it trained into a row)

I cut all my Heritage canes down to the ground last winter, and so this is the first time I'm attempting to get a fall only crop. Still, I have maybe 5 different clusters of berries setting right now. One berry that'll be ready to pick probably tomorrow is very large. The biggest I've seen on my Heritage, so I'm hoping that all the info on cutting them down to produce a bigger/heavier crop is true. But yeah, I was confused too because I thought I would not even begin to see anything until quite a bit later on. (I hope this isn't all I'm going to see!!!)
ericwi
13 years ago
Clearly, the raspberry plants have not read the manual, regarding how they should behave...
franktank232
13 years ago
This is my Caroline from this morning. The canes are loaded with new clusters...

{{gwi:119369}}
fruitgirl
13 years ago
What's fruiting right now are probably canes that grew from basal buds on those 8" stumps. So they are technically floricanes (second year canes), I suppose, since they grew from a bud on what would have been the floricane, and aren't actually true primocanes, which emerge from the ground. At any rate, fruit from basal buds tends to come in between the true floricane crop and the primocane crop.

FWIW, it can be really hard to tell sometimes whether you've got a basal bud cane or a true primocane. The folks who breed primocane fruiting raspberries and blackberries have to be really careful to distinguish between the two.

Confused about everbearing raspberries

Comments (7)

glenn_russell

ericwi

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