It is not too late to prune your blackberries and raspberries

From OSU Fact sheets HYG-1431 and HYG-1421

WHAT STEPS SHOULD BE FOLLOWED TO SUCCESSFULLY PRUNE FLORICANE-FRUITING ERECT BLACKBERRIES?

Blackberries are considered to be biennial fruiting plants. Primocanes are actively growing vegetative shoots that are produced in the first year, and the floricanes are normally the fruit-producing canes. Some erect blackberry varieties (e.g., Prime Jim, Prime Jan) produce fruit on primocanes in the fall. Primocanes, left untipped, can grow several feet in length. In the following year, primocanes mature into floricanes. Once the fruit has been harvested, the floricanes will eventually die. All spent floricanes should be removed from the blackberry planting. By removing the spent floricanes, more room will be available for new primocanes to grow the following year.

The following steps will help you to keep your blackberry planting in good condition.

1. Take time to observe the planting and determine what canes need to be pruned.
2. During the growing season, tip back each developing primocane to 48 inches in late June and July.
3. Lateral shoots will develop throughout the growing season.
4. Tip lateral shoots back to 18 inches in the spring of the following year to avoid winter injury.
5. Do not prune floricanes before the fruiting season unless damaged or diseased.
6. When the fruiting season is over, use loppers to cut out spent floricanes at the root crown.
7. Discard all pruned plant material.

For more information on pruning blackberries click here: Pruning Erect Blackberries in the Home Garden _ Ohioline

Pruning Raspberries

It is very important to understand the terms used to describe various parts of a raspberry plant before attempting to prune raspberries (Figure 5). Raspberry canes are best described and identified using two different terms; specifically, primocanes and floricanes. Primocanes are first year canes, characterized by rapid growth and expansion from the crown of the plant or ground nearby, while floricanes are second-year fruiting canes.

Summer red raspberries should be pruned twice a year, first in the spring and immediately after harvest. The spring pruning, in late March or early April, consists of removing all weak canes and cutting back tall canes (over 5 feet) to 4.5 to 5 feet. The second pruning consists of the removal of canes that produced fruits, right after harvest.

Everbearing red raspberries such as “Heritage” raspberry can be pruned to produce fruit once a year or twice a year. If you thin floricanes to about 5 inches between canes in March and maintain all canes in an 18 to 24 inch strip, “Heritage”-type raspberries will bear fruit on the older floricanes in early summer and then in the fall, the newly grown “fruiting primocanes” may also produce fruit (Figure 6). However, many home gardeners and commercial growers mow or cut all “Heritage” canes to the ground in early spring (March or April) for the sake of simplicity. “Heritage” raspberries pruned this way will produce only one crop starting in early August in southern Ohio, and mid-August in central Ohio. Everbearing raspberries can produce fruits until frost.

Black and purple raspberries are pruned three times a year: in the spring, summer and after fruiting (Figure 7). Primarily, pruning is done in spring when lateral branches are cut back to approximately 8 to 10 inches in length in mid-March. The second time to prune is called “tipping” or “heading back” of the new canes or primocanes. When grown without a support structure, summer tipping is done when black raspberry canes reach 24 inches in height and when purple types reach 30 inches. Tipping is done by removing the top 2 to 3 inches of new shoots as they develop. The third pruning event involves the removal of all of the floricanes that have finished producing fruit.

Figure 6. Everbearing red or yellow raspberries before and after pruning using a cane thinning method.	Figure 7. Black and purple raspberries before and after pruning.