How to prune raspberries in the fall. An easy way to double your raspberry harvest. Determining the best time for pruning When cutting raspberries in autumn or spring

Raspberries, like many other shrubs and fruit trees, require annual pruning. Only regular care of your berry bushes will allow you to get the most abundant and tasty harvests. But before you get to work, you need to find out what the main rules for spring pruning raspberries are, when and how to do it. It is also important to be able to distinguish regular raspberries from remontant ones.

Note! The main pruning of raspberries is usually done, and in the spring only corrective, or rather sanitary, pruning is done.

Of course, if you did not have the opportunity to prune raspberries in the fall, then it is better to prune in the spring than not to prune at all.

The main purpose of pruning raspberries is to increase their yield (improve fruiting).

The tasks of pruning any raspberry (regular and remontant) are:

cutting out immature, frozen, broken, dry and damaged shoots (sanitary pruning);
pinching the tips of the shoots for better branching;
thinning the plantings so that the bushes are better ventilated and
received more sunlight;

What, in general, is the point in shoots that are only thickening and have already bear fruit?

Another thing is that if you planted raspberries too close, then so that the bushes do not shade each other, it is worth thinning them out, removing the weakest ones.

giving the bushes a neat appearance (an additional aesthetic function).

When to prune raspberries in spring, in what month: optimal timing

It is highly advisable to prune raspberries in spring before the sap begins to flow, when the buds have not yet opened. In other words, raspberries should sleep. In this case, the temperature should already be stable positive during the day.

Although many gardeners successfully prune raspberries in the spring, already during the growing season, i.e. after the buds open and small leaves appear.

This is even more convenient: you can immediately understand which shoots need to be sanitary pruned and which ones do not need to be touched.

Thus, the approximate timing for pruning raspberries in the spring in different regions is as follows:

In the South, this is March-early April.
In the central zone (Moscow region), spring pruning is carried out in the second half of April - early May.
In the Urals and Siberia - in early May. Somewhere at the same time, raspberries are pruned in the North-West (in the Leningrad region).

Raspberries, like any plant, have their own characteristics of growth and fruiting and, accordingly, their own pruning rules.

If you haven't done fall pruning

Many novice gardeners look at spring pruning of raspberries with some caution, because... they are not sure which shoot is in front of them - the old one (which has already bear fruit) or the new one (which will bear fruit this year).

It's actually quite easy to tell the difference. On the contrary, it is very difficult to confuse.

Old shoots that bear fruit last year have many side branches, while they dry and brittle(they break with a crunch, because there are no living tissues in them).
New shoots that will bear fruit this year, on the contrary, have no lateral branches. At the same time, their branches are alive and elastic, and on them a lot of green buds.

When you trim their frozen tops, you will immediately notice a healthy green tint on the cuts.

Thus, if you have not trimmed the raspberries, then in the spring you must completely cut off all old fruit-bearing shoots at the root, leaving the minimum possible stumps.

A young shoots that formed last year (over the summer) - leave, on them that's what you'll get harvest. However, they will also need pruning (more precisely, pinching), which will be discussed below.

Video: spring pruning of raspberries

Spring pruning: sanitary pruning and pinching(if you carried out autumn pruning)

Pruning raspberries in spring is carried out as follows:

First you need to carefully examine the shoots and assess their condition after wintering.

If the buds at the tops of the shoots do not swell or open (leaves do not appear), then this may mean the following: the shoots did not initially ripen or froze during the winter.

Trim recommended bare (without swollen or opened buds) shoot tips, on which (for the above reasons) the buds could not wake up (swell) and open, to living swollen or already green (opened) buds.

Sanitary pruning also includes the removal of dry, damaged and weak (thin) shoots.

Now we need to carry out shortening of all (even healthy) tips of annual shoots, to stimulate their better branching and fruiting.

It is advisable to shorten it to 100-150 cm, or rather, according to the size of your trellis, so that the shoots can be tied up conveniently.

Note! You should have pinched the tops of young shoots for the first time last year, so that these shoots would produce lateral shoots in the fall (on which the future harvest will mainly form). And next spring you need to shorten these lateral shoots in order to provoke more branching - to increase the yield even more. In general, this is the meaning of double pruning according to Sobolev, the essence of which is described in the next paragraph.

Total needed leave 5-6 of the healthiest and strongest annual shoots on every raspberry bush or up to 10 per 1 meter, when planted in a row.

Remember! For abundant fruiting, raspberries need light and good ventilation inside the bushes.

Double pruning (according to Sobolev)

Attention! Double pruning is carried out only for regular raspberries, in the remontant one, the annual growths are not touched, since the harvest is also laid at the ends of their shoots.

In addition to the traditional pruning method, the method is popular among gardeners double raspberry trimming, which is also sometimes called trimming according to Sobolev

So, if your raspberry bushes have a lot of tall but unbranched annual stems, then you should get rid of them, since they still won’t give a good harvest.

It is in this case that double pruning according to Sobolev is performed.

First time Raspberry pruning according to Sobolev is carried out late May - early June when zero shoots reach height 70-100 centimeters, trimming (pinching) their crown by 10-15 centimeters.

Thanks to this pruning, additional shoots are formed from the leaf axils of the raspberry tree (dormant buds will wake up), in other words, the stem will begin to branch, and this will lead to the bush growing wider rather than upward. It is on these shoots that most of the berries will form in the new season.

Second trimming raspberries, according to Sobolev, are carried out either in the autumn of the same year (after fruiting), or already early next spring (optimally). This time you need to trim each top of the side shoots formed (after the first pruning), again cutting (pinching) by 10-15 centimeters.

Thus, new side shoots will also begin to branch even more and produce even more berries.

Video: double pruning raspberries to increase raspberry yield

Advice! If you plan to carry out double pruning to increase the yield, then in this case you should plant the raspberries at a greater distance from each other, since the bushes will thicken thoroughly.

It is also important to note that this method of pruning raspberries requires more careful care of raspberries: abundant watering and fertilizing in spring and autumn.

Pruning remontant raspberries and how they differ from regular ones

Remontant raspberries differ from ordinary raspberries in their high fertility - you can collect 2 harvests from a bush in 1 season (summer and autumn).

However, it is worth knowing that the second (autumn) harvest of remontant raspberries is less tasty, while the first (summer) harvest is not inferior in taste to regular ones.

Nevertheless, it makes sense to have both regular and remontant varieties on your plot in order to eat tasty and healthy berries both in summer and autumn.

Distinguish remontant raspberries from regular ones in the spring subject to availability at the ends of the shoots of last year's dried berries and flowers(if you did not do autumn pruning).

It is also believed that remontant varieties have thicker shoots, which also have a lighter shade (compared to ordinary ones).

Regular raspberries do not produce crops on young (zero) shoots, whereas repairable bears fruit How on young and last year's shoots.

Thus, if ordinary raspberries, as a rule, are pruned every fall (or immediately after fruiting), and only sanitary pruning is done in the spring, then remontant raspberries can be pruned both in the fall and in the spring.

Pruning remontant raspberries has its own nuances depending on when and how many harvests you want to get:

When annual, you need to cut all shoots to the root. In this case you will get enough abundant, but later And the only harvest is in August-September.
With perennial , you need to leave annual shoots every year. Then there will be raspberries bear fruit 2 times- 1 time in June-July, 2 times in August-September). And in this case feed it is needed more abundantly.

Note! In the conditions of the Middle Zone (Moscow region), it is better to cut off remontant raspberries completely (to get 1 good harvest in August-September). But in the South and in regions with a longer warm period, annual shoots can, and even better, be left in order to get 2 full-fledged harvests.

Autumn care for raspberries includes: pruning, soil treatment, plant feeding. All this work will help you make sure that the raspberries can safely overwinter. Pruning is a rejuvenating procedure for your crop. In the end, if you take proper care, you can have another bountiful harvest of berries next year.

How to prune raspberries in the fall? Should raspberries be pruned in the fall? And why prune raspberries in the fall? The pattern for pruning raspberries in autumn differs from other seasons. Typically, raspberries produce a bountiful harvest for two years; in the third year, the number of berries decreases significantly. You will have to prune young plants to zero. It seems a shame to cut out shoots that were able to survive the cold winter and bear fruit, but this decision is the most correct.

Which shoots need to be cut out? If you are not growing remontant raspberries, but ordinary ones, then you need to eliminate all the stems that are two years old and bear berries. It is necessary to leave young shoots that are no more than a year old for further excellent fruiting.

If you are going to prune remontant raspberries, then you need to observe some nuances. Pruning the remontant crop depends on how many times you want to get the harvest: once or twice. If once, then the pruning process is carried out in exactly the same way as with ordinary varieties. If twice, then the shoots should be pruned and only young annual plants should be left in order to get a harvest in the autumn.

There is a specific procedure for pruning. Pruning raspberries in the fall for beginners includes:

First, it is necessary to trim the stems that are broken and dried out at the root. Annual branches should also be removed.
Next, eliminate all biennial plants.
If the bushes have become overgrown, they should be trimmed, leaving about ten good stems per square meter.
As soon as you have cut the branches, they all need to be burned, because they contain pests that are dangerous.
As soon as the pruning procedure is completed, the area around the raspberry bushes must be cleared of weeds.
The most recent procedure is feeding the plant and treating the soil cover.

Important: You can cut the plant completely to the ground because new branches grow from the underground part. There is no need to leave stumps.

Is there a need for autumn pruning if this work can be done in the summer, as soon as the raspberries stop bearing fruit? In summer and autumn, pruning is necessary. But the main pruning of the plant is carried out precisely in the autumn period before the onset of frost. However, many people begin to do this work at the end of the summer period, namely in August, as soon as the raspberries bear their last berries. Why is this being done? This is necessary so that the raspberries can direct all their strength to young plants.

If you grow ordinary raspberry varieties, then pruning should not be done at the end of autumn, since pests will have time to multiply during this long period of time. Therefore, as soon as the berry harvest is completed, begin pruning unnecessary branches.

The number of new shoots should match the number of old stems cut off. Thanks to this, your raspberries will not thicken. As you know, the greater the distance between the bushes of a plant, the better they can be ventilated and receive the light and warmth of the sun's rays. Thanks to this, the fruits will be more tasty. Root shoots may appear between berry bushes. It can be replanted if you plan to propagate raspberries. If not, then you need to eliminate it immediately as soon as it catches your eye. Transplanting raspberries in the fall is necessary for propagation.

If you grow black raspberries, then in addition to trimming the top of the shoot, you need to make the side shoots short. The length of the side shoots should be 50 centimeters. Thanks to this, productivity increases and the maintenance procedure is greatly simplified.

It is necessary to thin out the entire raspberry tree. The distance between bushes should be 60 centimeters. Young plants around them must be removed with a shovel, thinning out the distance.

Another easy but most important job is removing leaves from the bush. If the foliage is not removed, it will cause damage to the trunk.

Double pruning of raspberries using the Sobolev method has become widespread. At the beginning of the summer period (June), the upper part of the shoots is pruned at a height of one hundred centimeters. Prune old bushes in spring.

Should raspberries be pruned in the fall? Absolutely, this is necessary work.

Important: The timing of pruning is determined in the spring. Autumn pruning is usually not carried out in September. It is produced in November or October. Thanks to this, the old bush is rejuvenated. Raspberries need to be pruned annually.

All these pruning procedures will help the plant develop safely. But autumn pruning alone is not enough for care; other measures must be taken to increase productivity.

Autumn work with soil

One of the first procedures that must be carried out in the autumn is working with the soil. Mulch that has been sitting throughout the summer season must be removed. If straw acts as mulch, then it must simply be burned, otherwise field mice and other pests will breed in the bushes.

Then the soil layer must be dug up. Since the raspberry roots are located quite close to the surface of the earth, you only need to go deeper into the soil twenty centimeters between the rows. The depth in the rows should not exceed ten centimeters. In addition to digging, you need to feed the plants.

What can you use to feed a plant? To feed raspberries in the fall after pruning, there are many means for this:

Manure. Before digging up a thicket of raspberry bushes, you need to apply this fertilizer. Five kilograms of this substance are added per square meter. If you fertilize the soil cover with manure while digging the ground, then this substance will serve as an excellent insulator for the roots of the plant. During the winter, the manure will rot, and in the spring the plant will receive nutrients.
Bird droppings. Chicken droppings are perfect. In the autumn season, this product in a liquid state is distributed over the bushes of the crop.
Compost. This product is an excellent replacement for manure. It is obtained by rotting leaves, weeds, and droppings.
Peat. This substance can be applied to the soil cover at different times. It does not provide such a huge amount of useful substances for the plant as manure or compost, but thanks to peat, the structure of the soil layer improves, which leads to an increase in yield.
Organic and mineral fertilizers. Raspberry bushes are treated with organic fertilizers once every three years. Mineral fertilizers should be alternated with organic ones. You need to alternate every other year. For example, in the first year manure is applied to the soil, and mineral fertilizers are applied in the next year. Before winter, it is necessary to add superphosphate and potassium salt. In autumn, the required level of moisture should be maintained. Thanks to this, fertilizers will dissolve well. But in the fall, under no circumstances should you use nitrogen fertilizers. Due to nitrogen fertilizers, raspberries will begin to actively grow, which will lead to negative results. If fertilization is carried out correctly, this will help to increase fruit yield.
Green manure. If fertilizing cannot be done using ready-made fertilizers, then it can be done with green manure. Green manures are plants that are sown between rows of bushes at the beginning of the summer period (June). Such plants can be mustard, vetch, and blue lupine. At the end of the autumn season (November), green manure shoots are embedded in the soil. As soon as it rots, green manure provides the raspberries with all the nutrients during the winter.

Such activities are necessary for caring for raspberries. You just need to follow a few rules and later you can get a bountiful harvest.

Good luck with your work!

Pruning raspberries in the fall is an important part of caring for raspberries, which are characterized by overly active growth. If you give the bushes free rein, in a couple of years they will turn into impenetrable thickets with dense foliage instead of sweet berries. No, you will have a harvest, but it will not please you with its size or quantity. But the plantings cleared in the fall will survive the winter better, they will suffer less, and they will produce more berries. For pruning to really bring benefits, it is important to know how to do it correctly and when it is best to do it. By preparing your raspberries for wintering, in the spring you will receive a healthy and abundantly fruiting raspberry tree.

Why is autumn pruning of raspberries important?

You can often hear, especially from novice gardeners, that it is better to prune berry bushes in the spring. Yes, after the end of fruiting it is clear which shoots have produced a harvest and need to be removed and are difficult to confuse with young ones. And unsuccessfully overwintered and frozen stems are also visible to the naked eye.

Along with unpruned raspberries, both pests and fungi can safely overwinter on them. And with the arrival of warmer weather, they begin to actively multiply, infecting new areas. This is precisely the main goal of autumn pruning: to remove excess plants along with the insects living on them in a timely manner. Affects the choice of when it is best to prune and the nature of winter. The colder it is and the less snow, the more sense it makes to carry out the work in the fall. An unkempt raspberry tree with young stems not covered with a blanket of snow will simply freeze.

In addition, autumn work in the raspberry field can improve its development and increase fruiting, namely:

Removing fruit-bearing shoots makes it possible to obtain adequate nutrition for young growth. As a result, it winters better and does not freeze.
Pruning helps regulate growth, because raspberries produce a lot of shoots over the course of a season. This leads to thickening of the plantings, and they begin to go beyond the designated area. Shoots from root shoots can appear at a distance of 3 m from the planting site. In raspberry thickets, plants do not receive enough nutrition and light. The ovary becomes smaller, the berries become smaller. What can we say about the fact that it becomes difficult to collect even such a harvest. You have to wade through the thickets and every trip to the raspberry patch ends with scratched hands and more. And in such wilds, various insects and diseases quickly appear.

Non-repairing raspberry varieties produce crops only on last year's shoots. In the third year, most of them dry out, and if they survive, they produce few berries, while taking away nutrition from the fruit-bearing second years.

When to prune raspberries in the fall

The pruning time depends on two factors: the type of raspberry and the region where it is grown. In the latter case, the timing varies from mid-summer to mid-autumn. You can start pruning after the end of fruiting and harvesting of the last harvest. If the moment was missed, it doesn’t matter - it’s quite possible to do it a month later.

But the main rule is: work in the raspberry garden must be completed 3 weeks before the arrival of frost.

Approximate trimming times for different regions:

southern strip - from the second ten days of July to the second ten days of October;
middle zone - from the second half of August to the second half of September;
northern regions – the month of August.

The nuances of pruning fast-growing raspberry varieties in the fall

Pruning those varieties of crops that are characterized by rapid growth of shoots has its own characteristics. One of the brightest representatives of vigorous varieties is the black Cumberland raspberry. With regard to it and other similar varieties, it will not be possible to use the cutting method for simple raspberries and limit yourself to doing it once. In this case, by mid-summer, due to too active growth, the bush will become too dense. Pruning once only encourages the appearance of even more branches. Thickened raspberries will begin to hurt, and the yield will drop.

Both Cumberland and all fast-growing raspberry varieties require double pruning:

In summer. At the end of June, young stems are shortened, the height of which has reached and exceeded 2 m. After the procedure, shoots no more than 1.7 m high should remain. By next summer they will grow many lateral fruiting branches. Accordingly, the harvest will be greater.
In autumn. From October, raspberries can be prepared for wintering. Now it’s time to carry out sanitary pruning: remove thin, broken and diseased stems. Branches older than 2-3 years (bearing fruit) are also completely cut out. Last year's lateral growth is shortened by 20 cm (the future harvest will be on it). And young stems that are too tall are trimmed to the height of the trellis.

If summer pruning is carried out to increase productivity, then autumn pruning is sanitary and shaping.

Features and methods of autumn pruning of remontant raspberries step by step

Regular raspberry varieties produce only one harvest, no matter how you care for them. But remontant types of crops are capable of bearing fruit several times in one season. In addition, unlike the first ones, sweet berries ripen not only on two-year-old stems, but also on one-year-old shoots. Therefore, pruning of such varieties is radically different both in method and timing. Since the procedure is carried out after the last harvest, it does not fall in the summer, but in the autumn. And only in the southern regions, otherwise the bushes will freeze in winter.

The general rules for autumn pruning of remontant raspberries are as follows:

complete removal of fruit-bearing biennial stems at the root;
shortening annual shoots by 20–30 cm.

As already mentioned, remontant varieties set berries until autumn. However, some gardeners prefer to harvest one harvest, but a larger one.

When growing this variety of plants, there are two pruning methods to choose from:

Drastic pruning to get one harvest. After the first frost, the entire raspberry tree is cut off completely into a stump. This cannot be done before, otherwise the young shoots that appear will freeze in the winter. In the spring they are simply thinned out.
Double pruning for two harvests. After the first wave of fruiting, two-year-old shoots are cut out. The remaining stems are pruned like a simple raspberry, after the second, autumn, fruiting.

When using the second method, each of the harvests individually will not be particularly large. But together they will produce the same number of berries as ordinary varieties, but in terms of keeping quality they will surpass them.

Double pruning of raspberries in autumn using the Sobolev method

In the 80s, one of the gardeners named Sobolev proposed his own method of pruning remontant raspberries. It is aimed at significantly increasing the yield of the berry garden and allows you to collect up to 6 kg of harvest from each bush. The basis of the procedure is also double pruning, characteristic of this plant variety, but improved.

The formation of a young bush itself takes several years:

During the first season, raspberries leave no more than 10 shoots.
In the second year, those branches that bear fruit are removed. They are replaced with young growth, while reducing the number of stems to 8 pieces per bush.
This is how replacement is carried out annually, reducing the number by 2 stems. As a result, at the final stage the bush will have 4 young branches.

To ensure that all plants in the raspberry garden have enough light and air circulates freely between the stems, distances must be maintained. Seedlings are planted at a distance of at least 1 m from each other.

In the future, care is taken to ensure that the young shoots do not spread beyond these boundaries. When planting raspberries in rows, leave row spacing of at least 2 m wide.

Despite the enormous advantage of the method of relatively high yields, it also has disadvantages. As a result of intensive pruning, the bushes quickly produce young shoots and thicken. To prevent this, excess growth is regularly removed during the season.

Advantages of pruning raspberries according to Sobolev

Sobolev pruning is used mainly in warm regions and is carried out in the spring:

In the first ten days of May, the stems are shortened, leaving no more than 1 m. This height will not take away much nutrition from the roots. At the same time, the shoots grow strong and do not break in the wind.
In the second year, the trimmed branches have lateral branches. They are also pruned in the spring by removing the tops. At the same time, straight young stems are shortened, also up to 1 m. By mid-summer, a bush pruned according to Sobolev has: branching second-year plants with many ovaries, flowering annuals, and young growth.
In the fall of the second year, the two-year-old branched stems that produced the harvest are removed.
In the third spring, the lateral branches of last year's trimmed growth are again shortened and the young ones are pruned. The stems of the current year must be thinned out, forming a bush further.

In the fourth season, the procedure is repeated from the beginning. As you can see, as a result of frequent pruning, the raspberries branch strongly and produce a lot of growth. On the one hand, this is good: the more stems, the higher the yield. All this happens thanks to the ability of remontant raspberries to bear fruit on both young and last year’s shoots.

Frequent thinning of the raspberry tree will help to avoid the main drawback - thickening of the bushes.

How to properly prune raspberries in the fall is described in detail in the video.

Caring for raspberries in the fall after pruning

Undoubtedly, pruning is an important procedure and helps prepare the raspberry tree for a successful winter.

However, that’s not all, because after cutting the plants need the following care:

Autumn feeding. Potassium sulfate and superphosphate will increase the winter hardiness of crops and promote the formation of fruit buds. A solution of bird droppings for watering at the roots is also suitable for autumn fertilization of bushes.
Moisture-charging irrigation. It is especially important if the autumn turns out to be dry, without rain. One adult bush requires at least 5 buckets of water.
Preventive treatment. Spraying with Bordeaux mixture will protect raspberries from diseases. Conventional varieties are processed in the spring.
Mulching the tree trunk circle will protect the roots from rodents and frost.

As for whether it is necessary to cover remontant raspberries, they winter well only in the southern regions. In the rest of the territory, where winters are cold and often have little snow, the raspberry tree needs additional protection. It is easier to cover by first tying the stems into bunches and bending them to the ground. The top of the raspberries is covered with plant debris or film, making ventilation holes.

How to prune raspberries in the fall - video

Any novice gardener will sooner or later become interested in how to prune raspberries in the fall and why it is necessary. First you need to find out what it is. Raspberry is a shrub that consists of two parts: aboveground and underground. Every year it throws out new shoots using peri-root buds. Fruiting occurs in the second year after the start of growth using flower buds.

Do I need to prune raspberries in the fall?

How to prune raspberries correctly

In autumn, this process is carried out for better development of the branches of the bush, but pruning can also be used to increase its yield. This procedure is carried out in early spring. In its process, the tops of raspberry shoots are slightly shortened by about fifteen centimeters. This allows you to greatly slow down their development and direct the flow of enzymes and nutrients to where the gardener needs it, namely to the kidneys. This approach makes it possible to get a huge harvest by mid-summer.

How to prune raspberries in autumn

The process of pruning raspberries is very simple. It is necessary to completely remove all damaged, diseased or fruit-bearing shoots. In the future, they will only cause harm to the plant, and their destruction will have a beneficial effect on its development. They are cut as close to the ground as possible, without leaving even a small stump. In addition, there is a technique that allows you to further increase the number of berries on one bush. It's called "double pruning". To do this, one-year-old shoots are pinched when they reach a meter in length. This allows you to awaken the buds and get several side branches before the pruning procedure begins. After which they are allowed to overwinter and at the beginning of spring they are pruned along with all the others. This practice allows you to get the most abundant harvest.

Anyone interested in how to prune raspberries in the fall should understand that by reducing the number of branches, they harm the plant. All damaged shoots should be removed, but annual branches should be left intact.

How to get long-term fruiting

Anyone who wants to learn how to prune raspberries in the fall and get an extra harvest will be interested in the technique in which this shrub bears fruit within two months. To do this, during spring pruning, all two-year-old shoots are conditionally divided into three groups:

the first is cut off by twelve to fifteen centimeters;
the second is cut in half;
on the third, about fifteen centimeters in length are left.

This approach allows you to get a long harvest period: starting from the tenth of July and ending with the first days of September.

If you want to harvest high yields of tasty fruits with varietal characteristics from the raspberries on your plot, you have to prune them annually. Neglected and unkempt raspberry fields produce less than a quarter of their total yield potential. To ensure that old fruit-bearing shoots of the crop do not interfere with the growth of new ones, it is necessary to remove them in a timely manner.

Some novice gardeners naively assume that a large number of shoots growing from the ground will produce more yield. In fact, this is not true. In order for the raspberry plant to bear fruit, you need to ruthlessly remove all unnecessary parts from it.

Autumn pruning of raspberries is a mandatory crop care operation, which allows you not only to keep the raspberry tree neat, but also to stimulate its high yield.

Bushes pruned in autumn are well illuminated by the sun, ventilated, have increased winter hardiness and, when such favorable growing conditions are created, practically do not get sick. Autumn cleaning of the raspberry tree is the key to its excellent fruiting in the next gardening season. In addition, it is much easier to pick ripe berries from well-groomed bushes than from overgrown and neglected ones.

The main advantages of autumn pruning of raspberries compared to spring are:

cleaning all secluded places where pests, disease carriers, and fungal spores can hide and overwinter;
convenience of the event period. The fact is that in the spring, raspberries can be pruned only before the sap begins to flow and the buds begin to open. This period occurs at the end of March - beginning of April; in many garden areas there is too much dirt after the snow melts.

The only advantage of spring pruning of raspberries is that after wintering all the damage is clearly visible - something broke during the cold period, something froze. Therefore, gardeners often clean bushes in stages: in the fall - basic pruning, and in the spring - only sanitary pruning.

The above considerations apply only to two-year-old raspberries, that is, their usual varieties that produce a harvest once per season. , so that the shoots begin to grow as quickly as possible with the arrival of spring.

Pruning of raspberries of ordinary varieties (non-repairing) should be done no later than 2...3 weeks before the onset of frost. In connection with this rule, more precise timing for pruning in different regions of the country can be considered.

In the Moscow region, Central zone

In the conditions of the Moscow region, it is recommended to start pruning raspberries at the end of August - September after the crop bears fruit. You should not delay cleaning the bushes, since raspberries are considered one of the crops most often affected by pests and pathogens. It is in the fall that their last active activity occurs. To effectively combat them, plants are pruned as early as possible.

In the Urals, in Siberia

Taking into account the climatic characteristics of the Urals and Siberia, the timing of cutting raspberry shoots falls in August. The more precise optimal time depends on the specific variety and the end of its fruiting period.

In the Leningrad region

The climate of the Leningrad region is famous for its unpredictability, therefore, when pruning raspberries in August-September, 30 to 35 shoots are left in the raspberry field. This amount will be sufficient to replenish frozen and broken specimens next season.

Two-year-old raspberry varieties require annual fall pruning to achieve their full yield potential in the next gardening season. Below are detailed instructions for pruning such raspberries.

Tool preparation

Before you start work, you need to prepare your inventory. To trim raspberries, you can use sharp pruning shears, garden shears or a lopper. The latter has long handles, so the thorns do not cause any inconvenience when peeling raspberries. In other cases, you will also need gloves. The main requirement for the chosen pruning tool is the sharpness of the tip - if you use blunt equipment, the wounds on the bushes will take a long time to heal, as a result of which the raspberries will not have time to prepare for wintering.

To prevent the transfer of viral diseases of raspberries, the tool must be disinfected every time you move from bush to bush. Alcohol, a 10% solution of ferrous sulfate, and a dark pink solution of potassium permanganate are suitable for treating the tip.

Cutting out old, dry and diseased parts of the bush

All shoots that bear fruit during the season must be removed. They can be distinguished from young shoots by the color of the bark - dark brown. All dry stems must also be cut or broken by hand. If traces of pests and diseases have been noticed on the shoots, they must be removed. Broken raspberry branches must also be removed at the root (by wind, equipment, under the weight of their own fruits), since their restoration takes too much force from the bush, intended for preparation for wintering.

It is important to cut out any green shoots that appear towards the end of summer. They do not have time to become woody before the onset of frost, they die and allow insect pests to survive the winter in the remains. To clean the bush from green shoots, it is recommended to use a bayonet shovel - this way you can remove the shoots along with the roots. With its help, excess shoots are dug at a depth of 25 cm and easily pulled out.

Standardization of the number of shoots

During a season, with careful care of the raspberry tree, one root of the crop can produce up to 20 shoots. Of course, you need to choose the strongest and strongest of them and leave from 6 to 10 pieces in the bush. The optimal distance between them is 23...30 cm. All other shoots should be removed; they will only thicken the bush, which will lead to various kinds of diseases and create favorable conditions for the appearance of pests.

Removing immature shoot tips

The tops of the remaining shoots that will bear fruit next year are shortened by 20...30 cm. Pruning this growth helps to accelerate the ripening of the entire shoot, which has a beneficial effect on surviving winter and future productivity.

Removing remaining foliage

After pruning the bushes, it is necessary to remove the remaining foliage on the shoots. To do this, using gloves, you can run your hands along the trunks and remove the leaves.

This is how pruning is carried out for varieties of two-year-old, non-repairing raspberries that bear fruit once during the season.

Correct autumn pruning of raspberries: video

Remontant crop varieties that produce crops twice a season are pruned in a completely different way: both the timing of cutting shoots and the technology itself differ.

Most farmers recommend pruning remontant raspberries later - after the very first frost, during the period when the outflow of nutrients from the foliage to the root system ceases.
Pruning technology involves removing the entire above-ground part of the bushes. This technique stimulates early flowering and fruiting of the crop on annual shoots. When cutting out the vegetative part in the fall, remontant varieties show high yields in the next season in the short summer conditions of the Middle Zone and other even colder regions. In the southern regions, when pruning, small stumps up to 5 cm high are left.

If the bushes were planted this year, then they can only be shortened, leaving the length of the shoots from the ground level to no more than 20 cm.

Proper pruning of remontant varieties in the fall helps to increase their yield - the number of berries increases, and their taste and marketability improve.

There are also intermediate varieties of raspberries that produce a repeat harvest under favorable conditions. For such raspberries, you need to cut off only parts of the branches that had berries in the season. The remaining shoots will bear fruit next year. When you cut such varieties at the root in the fall, you can be left in the new garden season without a raspberry harvest.

The most important activity carried out after the formation of raspberry bushes is the collection of plant debris - it is necessary to collect all the cut stems and leaves and burn them. If this is not done, many pests and pathogens will overwinter in plant debris and continue their harmful activities on the raspberry field next season.

The next operation after cleaning the raspberries is organizing protection from frost. It has been proven that raspberries as a crop are very winter-hardy, but in snowless winters the flower buds are severely damaged. To ensure that the yield of the bushes does not fail in the next season, they are bent to the surface of the earth so that in winter all the shoots are covered with snow.

You can do this activity if the air temperature has not dropped below +5 0 C. Otherwise, the wood on the shoots will crack. The second option for protection from frost is grouping raspberry shoots and covering them with agrofibre.

The high yield of raspberries largely depends not only on the variety grown, but also on the degree of care for it. Pruning a bush does not take a gardener a lot of time, its technology is clear even to any beginner in this business, but the need for this autumn event is obvious - well-groomed bushes bear fruit well, form large, sweet berries that are easy to pick.