Pruning Raspberry Plants

Raspberry season is over.  So sad.  Unfortunately, what could have been an amazing raspberry season for us this year was interrupted and cut short because of the move.  We moved the plants during the most crucial stage, as the berries were ripening, so the berries themselves did not ripen fully and some of them were dry, small, and just plain sad.  The plants took awhile to establish, and a lot of it died off.  But, in the last several weeks, we've had a resurgence of the plants and have more growth.  No more berries, but now that the plants themselves have established, next year looks promising.

Every year, in order to maximize berry production and to give the live plant parts enough room, you have to prune the bushes.  It's really easy.  Here's what we started with:

Lots of dead stuff with green parts underneath.  Since raspberry bushes are not really bushes, and just a whole bunch of individual-looking sticks coming from the general same ground area, pruning is easy.  You just find your dead sticks, follow them down to about 12 inches from the ground and cut.  I think you can cut lower, but that's what I did this year.  You just need to make sure that the sticks you cut are the ones that fruited this year.  The ones that didn't fruit will next year so leave them alone.

That's it.  It took 3 minutes and looks way better.  See?