Pruning is done at various times. Your raspberries are both fall bearing cultivars btw. Primocanes are 1st year canes Floricanes are 2nd year canes Fall bearing bear fruit on both primocanes and floricanes. Primocanes will have a fall crop on upper 1/3. The next summer lower 2/3 will fruit (now called floricanes). You can just take the first crop and cut them down. Or you can also take the summer crop. Up to you. If you want both crops once primocanes are done fruiting, cut off upper 1/3, and leave the bottom 2/3's to fruit next summer after winter. So a new cane will fruit in fall, then the next summer will bear fruit again. It is confusing! Some just take one crop to make it easy. I myself take both crops. Blackberries and summer bearing raspberries fruit on 2nd year canes only (floricanes). With blackberries you want to tip them at 4 feet. They will produce lateral shoots, and produce more berries. You can tip them when they reach 4 feet. This is not a set rule, 3 feet or 6 feet, is OK. If left to grow too long berries can break canes from the weight. So best to prune them. New canes come from the crown with blackberries. Just leave them. It doesn't matter how many. Raspberries throw suckers that come up all over. A rule of thumb is to space about 6 inches apart. Any closer it becomes too crowded, not enough light or air flow. Blocking air flow encourages fungal growth. So if new canes are very close, you can thin them out. Do this when dormant. Once floricanes fruit in done, remove them ASAP

JEan, I looked at root rot and I cant imagine this could be it. the soil is mostly dry on the top 1". we have horrible hot wind and the patches get plenty of ventilation. My primocaines have no dark rotton look at the base. I intentionally underwater a little to avoid this. MAPLEBIRCH: The ground is not uniformly moist in my caroline and heritage patches on the north side of the house. There are x2 the plants this year and less natural rain and I am probably only watering 25% more. HOWEVER on the west and east side patches my tulameen, polkas and autumn brittons seem to be much more moist but are suffering from the same shriveled berries and crispy or decimated leaves. Very discouraged. I have watered heavily by hand a couple times this week to see if maybe I am just too dry. The berries form in small beautiful clusters however at maturity, i would say 70-80% are toast. :(

larry gene; I'm unsure if I have any fruit flies, but I have noticed a few flies that looked like a regular fly but were about 1/4th the size and all black - wonder if they are fruit flies? I don't know enough about all the insect identifications, but even though I think some of the wasp like things can be harmful I also read where they all pollinate - and then I read where others grew raspberries and never sprayed anything ever. So I'd go over there and tend my row of raspberries and just watch all the activity, being somewhat jazzed about all the various pollinators doing their jobs. Now I wonder if I shouldn't have gotten on a spray schedule of some kind. I looked up raspberry beetle that you mentioned beeman but I can't honestly say I've seen one of them yet. (And I may have just overlooked it) So I don't know what's making that almost too small to see thread thin little worm inside my berries but I for sure know I dropped the ball somewhere!!!

This happened to me too. I had a thick patch of red raspberries, and no blacks. Two years ago I transplanted a lot of them 5-10 feet away to spread them out. When the berries showed up, about half of the plants had black raspberries. This year they are all growing black raspberries, except one plant with reds. I don't buy any cross-pollination theories, for the reasons given above. Maybe the red plants were all displaced by incoming black plants - doesn't seem very likely. My Mom suggests this possibility, without any real justification: the red plants are actually black raspberry plants at the roots, which have had red branches grafted onto them for some botanical reason. If they die back too far, the red grafting is gone and when they grow up again they show their true biologic colors. If that's not it, then I have some good conspiracy theories which would make an excellent sci-fi movie.