Hello,
  we've recently taken on an allotment and one side of it is edged with raspberries.All look as though they have fruited -some recently and the others quite a while ago .Could anybody please give us any advice re pruning and mulching,as I know nothing about growing soft fruit.
          Thank you,
            Sue
there are two types of raspberries: summer fruiting and autumn fruiting.
summer rasps carry fruit on last year's canes, i.e. fresh canes will not fruit, but fruit will be on year old brown canes.
for those, cut out old canes that did carry fruit this summer, and leave fresh growth for next year's fruiting (this year's canes will look green-brown by now rather than all brown)
autumn fruiting rasps bear fruit on fresh canes, so for those you could cut back all the canes to about 5 in above ground.
how to tell them apart? i dont know, to be honest. if there are still fruit on them now, even if shrivelled up, they may be autumn ones. my summer fruiting rasps havent had any fruit since august.
Many thanks Svea.We will go and have a closer look tomorrow-secateurs in hand!
    Best wishes Sue
See whether the fruit is any good, if there is any. In time they tend to develop virus diseases and deteriorate; at this point they just have to be replaced. When I took over my plot I inherited some but they were completely useless.
great advice, thanks
Many thanks for your help.The bushes look quite good and a neighbour says that they fruit well,so we're going to prune them as described and see what happens next year.We've also found three Gooseberry bushes and a line of rhubarb,so we should be alright for crumble next year!
  Best Wishes Sue.
Following on from your comment about gooseberries ...
we inherited some of them, which fruited in our first year but did nothing this year. I'm sure this is because we neglected them .. but what do we do to encourage them to fruit next year .. how do we prune etc???