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Particular attention at the onset of the dacha season and right up to winter is given to berry bushes, including raspberries. To pamper your family with delicious berries throughout the summer, agronomists recommend planting different varieties of raspberries on your plot. To ensure maximum harvest during the season, it is important to provide the bushes with proper care.
This article will talk about how to care for raspberries in the fall. From it you will learn how to prune raspberries, how to fertilize the crop and what you need to know about preparing raspberries for winter.
How to prune raspberry bushes correctly
The stage of forming bushes by pruning plays an important role in caring for raspberries. All excess shoots must be removed. In this case, you can thin out the raspberries and form beautiful bushes. This is important, because during the cold season the bush will spend a lot of vitality to maintain the vital activity of the stems and if pruning is not done, it simply will not have enough strength to survive the winter.
Another important benefit of pruning: it makes it easier to control harmful insects. Fungi and pests usually accumulate on the apical part of raspberry leaves and stems, so pruning can easily and reliably get rid of them.
Warning! In November, raspberry bushes shed leaves, which may contain pathogenic microorganisms. Once in the ground, they penetrate the root system and can live in a state of hibernation in the ground until spring. With the onset of heat, these microorganisms will destroy the raspberry tree, so in the fall it is important to rake all the castings and cut stems to remove all pests and viruses from the area.
Pruning helps clear the plant of excess shoots, which will improve the nutrition of the bush. There should be approximately 9 shoots left on one bush. In this case, you can expect juicy and large berries next season. If you leave more shoots, the berries will ripen at different times, since the raspberry bush will not have enough strength to feed all the fruits. The berries will not only be small, but also sour, so it will not be possible to evaluate the taste of the variety.
Proper pruning increases raspberry yields. The berries are formed on one-year shoots borne on two-year branches. In remontant varieties, berries appear on one-year-old shoots. So, to increase yield, pruning should be done in October.
There are 3 types of raspberry pruning:
- Regular.
- Double.
- For shortening.
Regular pruning
When carrying out regular pruning before winter, approximately 70% of the shoots are removed. Some gardeners remove the entire stem. The pruning technique depends entirely on the raspberry variety. Varieties with good vegetation are pruned completely. By the beginning of summer of the next season, shoots can reach up to 1 m in height.If the growth of the plant is slow, then the shoots are cut off by 50–70%.
Double trimming
For all varieties of raspberries, you can use the double pruning method, however, it is usually used when caring for remontant varieties of berry bushes. In this case, it is worth taking into account the growth activity of the plant.
The crown should be lush, because this is the only way to expect abundant fruiting. Thus, the growth point is shortened twice a year: in autumn and spring. Thanks to this, the bush will grow in all directions. With timely pruning in the fall, new shoots and branches will produce a larger harvest next year.
Trimming for shortening
Raspberry pruning Shortening involves cutting off the entire above-ground part of the bush. This method is suitable for bushes with weak vegetation and producing weak yields. Thus, you can remove pests by removing them from raspberry beds. In addition, shortening allows you to increase the yield of shrubs, since pruning stimulates the development of biennial shoots.
Cleaning raspberry fields from waste
After trimming unripe tops and old stems, you need to remove fallen leaves and other waste from the raspberry tree. They are placed in compost pits or burned. This is important to do, since they can overwinter and reproduce in fallen leaves and cut stems. pests and pathogenic bacteria, as a result of which the entire raspberry tree will suffer.
The same can be said about the grass that can grow in a raspberry field. Pests can also overwinter in it, so caring for raspberries includes weeding the beds.
Killing insects on and around raspberry bushes
Raspberry processing autumn includes the destruction of harmful insects. To destroy them in a raspberry garden, it is carried out bush processing and the soil around them.To do this, after picking the berries, spray the bushes with Fufan in the proportion of 10 ml of the drug per 10 liters of water. An average of 1–1.5 liters of liquid is required for one bush and the ground around it. Another effective drug against pests is Actellik. One ampoule should be diluted in 2 liters of water. Raspberries also need to be treated by spraying, at a distance of 10 m2 It takes about 1.5 liters of liquid.
Another anti-insect drug is available in tablets. So, 1 Intavir tablet should be dissolved in 10 liters of water. All bushes are sprayed with this solution. If you need to treat raspberries from the dominance of mosses and lichens, then the ground around the bushes must be watered with a solution of copper or iron sulfate.
Fertilizing and fertilizing raspberries
Caring for raspberries includes autumn feeding of bushes. This is necessary in order to restore the balance of the soil, which will contribute to a bountiful harvest in the coming season. In addition, entering fertilizers has a positive effect on the stems of shrubs. With the right approach to this matter, by winter the stems will increase in diameter, become woody and stock up on the necessary amount of nutrients that will help them successfully cope with frosts and severe winter cold.
IN feeding those varieties of raspberries that are subject to shortening and regular pruning are needed. Depending on the variety, it is necessary to apply fertilizers to the soil starting in August, or in September.
After harvesting the last harvest or during the second flowering of raspberry bushes (we are talking about remontant varieties), fertilizers are applied. It could be urea. For 1 hundred square meters you will need 50 g of urea. It is better to apply a small dose of fertilizer the first time, and after some time, repeat feeding.The drug in a dose of 50 g is diluted in 10 liters of water.
This product can be replaced with organic matter. For example, liquid mullein or bird droppings diluted in water. In some cases, organic fertilizers have a more obvious effect on plants than chemical ones. Thus, the leaves acquire a more saturated green color, and the growth of the stems accelerates.
Caring for raspberries in spring involves the introduction of nitrogen-containing fertilizers into the soil. This speeds up the plant's metabolism, which stimulates its growth and increases the volume of young shoots.
If you prune raspberries at the root for the winter, then in the second half of October you should add fertilizer to the soil. The bushes should rest for several weeks, and after a month they can be pruned.
Bending down to protect raspberries from frost
There are many varieties of raspberries that do not tolerate harsh winters. Under such circumstances, many gardeners have resorted to this trick: each stem is bent as low as possible to the ground and tied to the bottom wire (if you have cords for gartering shoots along the rows of raspberries) or to the previous raspberry bush. Thus, the stems of the bushes will be no higher than 30 cm from the ground. This event is carried out to ensure that the raspberry bushes are completely covered with snow in winter.
Breeders have developed frost-resistant raspberry varieties such as Solnyshko, Gusar and Yellow Giant. They don't need bending down. The stems of such varieties are tied into bunches, which are tied to a peg. Such an event will protect the stems from gusty winter winds and the accumulation of wet snow.
So, caring for raspberries includes pruning, fertilizing and protecting the bushes from frost. If you follow the recommendations outlined in the article, you will get a bountiful raspberry harvest next season.
We also invite you to watch a video on this topic:
