Hi. Every year I get more and more confused trying to differentiate between new and old when trying to prune my summer fruiting "Glen Ample" in the Autumn.
Would it really affect the fruiting canes if I cut the whole lot back. I have been told that it shouldn't make any difference.
Any thoughts please.
If you cut back in the autumn all the canes on summer fruiting raspberries you will get very little if any fruit the next year. Summer fruiting varieties fruit on the wood made the previous year. autumn fruiting ones fruit on the wood made the same year. The RHS have tried cutting autumn fruiting ones only half way in the spring and say that you can get two crops that way, I have never tried it so cannot comment. You can usually tell which is the old wood on summer ones as that is the canes you have had tied in the new ones are not tied.
laurie's right - you won't get a crop next year if you cut them all down. You shouldn't be having much difficulty working out which is which though. Brown ones are old, green ones are new. Plus you see old fruit on the ones you need to remove.
I agree if you cut all the canes to ground level you are cutting out next years crop. look carefully at the canes there are two kinds.
One, green all the way up, no side growth, and a small bunch of leaves at the top, these will fruit next year, leave them BUT tie them to some support, as the weight of fruit will pull them down.
Two, a cane that is brown all the way to the top, with side shoots, with possibly the remains of old raspberries on them, they look dead. they are dead. cut them out and burn.