Raspberry canes

[luckycharlie]

   When do I cut my raspberry canes down please? Also the new branches are about 6ft high do I need to cut them down too?

  Thanks

 X Chas

[luckycharlie]

[antipodes]

Not till they finish fruiting! The new fruit grows at the top!
I have summer fruiters, last year I cut them back hard in February and manured them. They have never been so big as this year.

[luckycharlie]

   Thank you was just worried that I wont know which is old and which is new when the leaves fall off. I could tie colored ribbon on the old ones I expect ;D ;D  It will be great when I can give advice instead of asking daft questions  ;D ;D


X Chas

[lincsyokel2]

   Thank you was just worried that I wont know which is old and which is new when the leaves fall off. I could tie colored ribbon on the old ones I expect ;D ;D  It will be great when I can give advice instead of asking daft questions  ;D ;D


X Chas

none of us have managed that yet, dont worry.....................

[peanuts]

Your questions aren't daft, don't worry! Assuming your raspberries are all summer fruiting ones (rather  than autumn ones eg Autumn Bliss, which produce fruit from about July continually through to  October, and have to be treated differently) it is best to remove this year's fruiting canes as soon as they've stopped producing.  It was a job I used to love doing on one of those balmy warm September days, a really pleasant clearing up job.  Cut them virtually down to the ground. At the same time you can tie in the next year's canes which at this stage will still be green with green leaves on. Keep the best ones, perhaps between five or six per plant, removing any surplus or weak ones. The old ones you are cutting down will have brown and much older-looking drier stems, so easy to tell the difference.  Our new growth used to be very tall by now, and if necessary I used to cut it to just above the top wire, or sometimes I bent it over and tied it along horizontally, to as not to waste fruiting stem! It's certainly worth doing this before winter, or windy weather. 
They definitely like feeding with  an annual much of manure or compost, plus a dressing of high potash fertilizer in March.  Hope this helps.
Peanuts.

[luckycharlie]

 
  thank you for the advice Peanut The weather looks more like October !!! So will cut it down when we get a nice day . We had loads of fruit this year but it was all finished in July but the branches are growing really tall now so will do as you say and try and tie them up.

X Chas

[antipodes]

Mine are still in mid-fruit and this year they are huge! You can tell the old branches quite easily, they look really woody  compared to the younger ones. I just forgot to cut mine last year so they didn't get done till winter. But I might do the same thing this year as it was so successful!  :P

[Digeroo]

I am going to cut back the old wood on my early raspberries and tie up the new growth for next year soon. 

My autumn raspberries seem to be early and are fruiting nicely at the moment, and they will get cut backduring the winter.

I do have a bit of a problem because some of my early raspberries seem to have got somewhat confused and are starting to fruit on the this years new growth.

For a long time I only had the early ones, but I am really enjoying having the Autumn crop as well.