Are my raspberries summer-fruiting or autumn-fruiting, and how do I prune each?

A raspberry cane lives for two years or for one, depending on the type, and that is the whole of the subject. Summer-fruiting varieties grow a cane one year and fruit on it the next, so pruning means choosing which canes to keep. Autumn-fruiting varieties grow and fruit on the same cane in one season, so pruning means cutting everything down with no judgement required at all — which makes them much the easier crop.

What you'll need

• Secateurs
• Posts and galvanised wire for summer varieties
• Soft string for tying in
• Mulch (optional)

Step by step

1. Identify which type you have by when it fruits.Picking in late June and July means summer-fruiting. Picking from late August until the frosts means autumn-fruiting. If you have both in a row, separate them, because they cannot be pruned together.
2. Put the support up before you need it.Summer varieties reach two metres and fall over. Two end posts with three horizontal wires at roughly 75cm, 1.05m and 1.6m, with canes tied individually to the wires rather than bunched. Autumn varieties are shorter and often need only a single wire or a temporary line either side of the row.
3. Prune summer-fruiting canes immediately after picking.Cut every cane that carried fruit right down to ground level — not to a stub. Those canes are finished and will never fruit again. Do it as soon as picking ends, in July or August.
4. Tie in the new summer canes and thin them.Keep the strongest six to eight new canes per metre of row and cut the rest out at the base. Tie them individually to the wires, spaced along them. Crowded rows fruit poorly and get cane diseases.
5. Tip the summer canes in late winter.In February, cut each retained cane back to about 15cm above the top wire, or to a healthy bud. That removes winter-damaged tips and steadies the row.
6. Cut autumn-fruiting raspberries to the ground in February.All of them, every cane, right to ground level. No selection, no judgement, nothing to get wrong. New canes come up in spring and fruit that same autumn.
7. Do not prune autumn types after fruiting in the autumn.Leaving the old canes standing through winter gives some frost protection to the crowns and, on some varieties, a light early summer crop from the old canes if you leave them one more season. February is the right month either way.
8. Feed and mulch in early spring.Raspberries are shallow-rooted and hungry. A general fertiliser or sulphate of ammonia plus potash in March, then a mulch of well-rotted manure or compost along the row, keeping it off the crowns.
9. Water while the fruit is swelling.Shallow roots mean raspberries suffer in drought exactly when the fruit is forming. A good soak weekly in dry weather from flowering to the end of picking makes a marked difference to size.
10. Replace the row every eight to ten years.Yields decline and virus builds up. Plant a new row in fresh ground rather than replanting in the same place, and buy certified virus-free stock.

Tips

• Autumn raspberries are the best fruit in a small garden: no support structure needed, no pruning decisions, no netting battle because the birds have largely moved on by September, and they crop from late August to the frosts.
• You can get an earlier, lighter crop from autumn varieties by leaving some canes unpruned, but the quality of the main autumn crop suffers. Pick one or the other.
• The old canes on a summer variety are obvious once you look — browner, woodier and often peeling, versus the green new ones.
• Never dig deeply along a raspberry row. The roots are close to the surface and damaged roots throw up more suckers.
• Space rows so you can pick from both sides. Reaching through a two-metre wall of canes is why people give up on summer varieties.

Common mistakes

• Cutting all the canes down on a summer-fruiting row in winter — It removes exactly the canes that would have carried the July crop. This is the single most common raspberry mistake and it costs a whole year.
• Cutting only the fruited canes on an autumn-fruiting row — Autumn types fruit on the current year's canes, so the treatment is to cut everything, which is easier — not harder — than the summer job.
• Leaving every new cane on a summer row — A congested row makes weak canes, small fruit and encourages cane blight and spur blight. Thin to six to eight strong canes per metre.
• Growing both types in one row — They need pruning at different times with different rules, and it becomes impossible to do either correctly.

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