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Raspberries are an incredibly tasty berry with medicinal properties. Both adults and children love to enjoy it. With its help, you can strengthen your immune system, cure colds faster, get rid of fever and even renew your blood. Breeders have bred a variety of varieties of this plant.
Some varieties bear fruit twice a year. Many gardeners really liked the remontant varieties of raspberries, as they do not require complex care. How to prune remontant raspberries in the fall? The answer to this question is very important, since the harvest in the next season will depend on how to prune raspberries. Therefore, this article is dedicated to covering the topic of pruning raspberries. There will also be a video relevant to the topic at the end.
Features of remontant raspberry varieties
The main feature of remontant raspberries is that they bear fruit twice a year, namely in spring and autumn. Below are the distinctive features of this type of berry:
- In the spring, the crop ripens on the branches of the second year, and in the fall - on the stems of the first year.
- The autumn fruiting period begins in August and continues until late autumn.
- The berries can remain on the branches for a long time without rotting or falling off.
- If you decide to completely cut off the shoots for the winter, then the root system will not need to be covered.
- Produces few replacement shoots.
- It does not need to be sprayed with chemicals.
Such properties extend the fruiting period of raspberries. Remontant raspberries appeared on the territory of the Soviet Union in the 70s. last century. The first varieties bred in the USSR managed to produce most of the berries before persistent frosts. Remontant raspberries can produce up to 10 kg of large berries per bush.
Distinctive features of pruning
I would like to say right away that pruning remontant raspberries for the winter differs from pruning conventional varieties of berries. All remontant varieties have three phases of development - growth, branching and fruiting, which take place in one year. In view of this, berries of this type are pruned in a special way. After the completion of autumn fruiting, the above-ground part of the remontant raspberry must be completely cut off.
In the spring, new stems will grow, which will need to be thinned out so that the strong ones can gain strength and grow. From this we can conclude that remontant varieties do not have a two-year cycle, like ordinary plant species, but an annual one. This has its advantages. Thanks to the annual complete pruning of the raspberry tree, diseases dangerous to the plant do not accumulate and pests do not have time to multiply in large numbers. In addition, thanks to the complete pruning of the above-ground part of the plant, it is not afraid of frost, which will not cause you much trouble caring for remontant raspberries in the fall.
Since the summer on Russian lands is not very long, in some regions gardeners only have time to collect the first fruits, after which persistent cold sets in. And many ovaries and flowers remain on the branches.Under such conditions, pruning remontant raspberries in the fall is performed according to a slightly different pattern.
Some gardeners perform all the work in the same way as when growing conventional varieties. A stem that has begun to bear fruit will not dry out during the winter cold. In this case, the raspberries immediately after wintering will begin to branch and produce berries at the beginning of summer. During the fruiting period, new stems will grow, from which you can collect many more delicious berries in the fall.
Remontant raspberries produce two harvests, which in total volume correspond to the yield from one harvest of ordinary berry varieties. It is very important to cut two-year-old stems after the first fruiting, around mid-summer. Also normalize newly growing stems.
Pruning technique
If you are new to growing raspberries, you may find it helpful to familiarize yourself with raspberry pruning techniques. Do I need to prune raspberries completely? It all depends on how cold the region in which you live is. If raspberries do not have time to ripen in the fall, then there is no need to cut them completely. And if you have time to harvest in the fall, then all the stems need to be cut off.
Now another question arises: how to properly prune remontant raspberries at the root? If you have to completely trim the bushes, this does not mean that there is no need to leave the stems at all. There should be 10–15 cm of branches left from the ground in height. Since the root system of remontant raspberries is not very deep, the remaining stems will be able to provide the roots with sufficient nutrition until the cold weather, thanks to which the plant will be able to overwinter.
Initially, all efforts are directed towards the development of the root system and bush. Active cutting of shoots should be done in the second year.The roots, which have become stronger by spring, will send out enough stems to obtain a double harvest of raspberries.
You need to get rid of cut shoots and stems as quickly as possible. Remove them from the beds and burn them, as pests and pathogenic bacteria can breed on them.
Fighting Sprawl
If, after pruning the remontant raspberries in the fall, there is no stable cold for 2 months, as a result of which the soil freezes, then the buds may germinate prematurely. This will negatively affect the yield. That is, complete pruning is performed in regions with a milder climate, and partial pruning is performed in regions where winters are severe.
If you wait until the buds open in the spring and then prune, the bush will receive all the necessary substances, which will accelerate its growth. In the northern regions, this is especially important, since the sooner the raspberries awaken, the more abundant the harvest you can count on.
Secrets of preparing for winter
Proper preparation of the plant for winter is the key to a good harvest in the coming season. Raspberries are quite capricious, so it is important to know how to properly care for them. Therefore, later in the article we will talk about how to care for remontant raspberries.
If uncut raspberry stems are left as is, severe frosts can destroy them. Therefore they need to be bent. This event will provide the raspberries with additional protection, since the stems will be under snow cover throughout the winter.
Caring for raspberries in autumn It may seem difficult for beginners, but if you follow all the recommendations outlined in the article, you can achieve success. And in fact, not everything is as complicated as it might seem. To perform bending, you should stretch a wire near the ground between the trellises, to which raspberries are tied in the summer. All the tops of the shoots are tied to it. This must be done before frost, before the stems become brittle.
In order for raspberries to winter well, it is necessary to fertilize them in the fall. It is better to avoid nitrogen ones, as they will reduce the frost resistance of the plant. Instead, add potassium and phosphorus fertilizers to the soil. In regions with little snow, you need to cover the bushes with snow so that they do not freeze. And if there is none at all, then you will have to cover the raspberry tree with some kind of covering material.
Mulching. If necessary
After you finish trimming the remontant raspberries for the winter, remove the cut branches from the raspberry tree and you can mulch the soil. But is it necessary to do this? Mulching will protect the shallow root system from frost. The roots are located literally 15 cm deep from the surface of the earth, so they need additional protection. Just pruning raspberries will not protect them from the cold.
Mulching provides an optimal balance of temperature and humidity for the root system of raspberry bushes. Moreover, thanks to these manipulations, a crust will not appear on the soil, which means that the roots will always have enough oxygen. Mulching is carried out to a depth of up to 7 cm. Wood ash, sawdust, peat, straw, humus, crushed bark and pine needles are used as mulch. So, you will improve the fertility of the soil, which will have a lot of humus.
Regular mulching can help minimize the formation of overgrowth. In addition, growth will decrease weed. So, with proper pruning and care of remontant raspberries, you will receive a well-deserved reward - a bountiful harvest of healing and tasty berries. We invite you to watch a video on how to prune remontant raspberries:
