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Autumn is the time of hassle associated with preparing perennials for winter. These include raspberries. To get a good raspberry harvest next season, you need to timely trim and cover the bushes.
Preparing raspberries in autumn for next winter consists of several stages:
- Trimming.
- Clearing waste such as pruned stems, fallen leaves and grass between rows.
- Feeding.
- Bend down and shelter from the cold.
This article will look at each stage separately. From it you will learn how to properly organize the care of raspberries in the fall, which will serve to prepare them for winter.
Raspberry feeding
To be honest, you need to start fertilizing plants not in the fall, but in the late summer. This promotes the ripening of the wood, which will help the raspberry bushes withstand winter cold. To achieve this, nitrogen fertilizers are eliminated and replaced with potassium and phosphorus fertilizers. For abundant raspberry yields, you need to provide the soil with a sufficient amount of nutrients that will prepare the root system of the shrubs for winter. The last feeding is carried out in early October.
How can you fertilize the soil to prepare raspberries for winter? Organic fertilizers such as peat, bird droppings, compost and manure, or green manure and mineral fertilizers may be suitable for this.
- Manure applied before digging the soil. At 1 m2 you need 4–6 kg of this fertilizer. Unrotted manure can serve not only as fertilizer, but also as a covering material. By spring, it will completely rot and saturate the soil with the necessary substances that will accelerate the growth and development of raspberries.
- Compost - this is rotted leaves, peat, weeds, bird droppings and corn cobs. It is applied to the soil in the same way as manure.
- Bird droppings – this is the best fertilizer for raspberries. It is diluted in water and distributed over all raspberry bushes.
- Peat You can fertilize raspberries not only in the fall, but also in the spring and even in the summer. With its help, the structure of the soil improves, thereby increasing the yield of raspberries.
- Application mineral fertilizers carried out once every 2–3 years. You can alternate the application of organic matter with soil mineralization - one year with manure or other organic fertilizer, and the second year with the application of mineral fertilizer. Caring for raspberries in the fall involves adding potassium salt (40 g per bush) or superphosphates (60 g per bush) to the soil. So, at a distance of about 30 cm from the bush, grooves should be made, having a depth of about 20 cm, into which minerals are introduced. In order for minerals to be better absorbed by raspberries, the soil must be watered in a timely manner. This is especially important to do in dry autumn.
- Green manure - these are plants sown between raspberry rows in June. It could be blue lupine, vetch or mustard. In late autumn, the soil is dug up, as a result of which green manure shoots fall into the ground.Having rotted in winter, green manure will saturate the raspberry bushes with all the necessary nutrients in the spring.
How to trim shoots
In order for raspberries to survive the winter, it is necessary to prune them in a timely manner. The life cycle of some raspberry varieties lasts 2 years. What does it mean? In the first year of life, the raspberry stem grows and becomes stronger, and the next year it begins to bear fruit. After harvesting, such a raspberry stem will still live until winter, thus taking away beneficial substances from young shoots. In the spring it will not bear fruit.
Therefore, in order for the young stems to receive a sufficient amount of nutrients, the old ones must be completely cut off. The tops of young raspberry shoots should also be cut off by about 15–16 cm. This is an important condition, since the shoot is in the growth stage and needs to become woody in order to survive the winter. Raspberry pruning promotes frost resistance of young animals.
Remontant raspberry varieties are distinguished by the fact that they bear fruit on annual stems. In view of this, all raspberry shoots should be cut off in the fall. This way you will protect your shrubs from diseases and pests. In this situation, pruning is carried out once, only in the fall. There is no need to repeat it in the spring. In place of the old shoots, new ones will grow, which will bear fruit.
To avoid rotting and damage to the buds, you need to remove all the leaves from the raspberries. This is done carefully. Before removing leaves from branches, it is recommended to wear mittens to make movements softer. In this case, the kidneys will not be damaged. Movements should be directed from top to bottom.
Pruning raspberries twice
By pruning raspberries twice, the yield of raspberry bushes increases. So, pruning is carried out twice a year - in autumn and spring.The tops of the stems, which have reached a height of 1 m, are cut off to 20–25 cm.
Thus, the growth of lateral stems is stimulated, which also branch, forming a lush bush with flower buds. If you decide to grow raspberries in this way, then there should be a large interval between the bushes - from 60 cm.
How to clean raspberries from waste
After the pruning has been done, it’s time to start removing waste from the raspberry tree. All branches, leaves and grass should be burned or moved to a compost bin. This event is mandatory, otherwise bacteria and pests will overwinter in the raspberry waste left in the raspberry garden and multiply in the spring.
Mulching the soil and bending the stems
To maintain an optimal moisture level for raspberries, you need to mulch the soil from time to time all year round, removing old mulch and laying new mulch to replace it. Preparing raspberries for winter includes mulching, since covering will protect the root system from frost. Sawdust, peat, bark, etc. can serve as mulch.
Raspberries do not like alkaline and acidic soil reactions. Therefore, if you use sawdust for mulching, it should not be from coniferous wood.
The mulch should be approximately 5 or 10 cm high. A smaller layer will not provide sufficient thermal insulation, and a larger layer will lead to dampening of the soil, and may even provoke the spread of fungal and purulent infections. Before mulching, the soil needs to be watered thoroughly so that the root system does not go into hibernation dry.
After the leaves fall from the stems, bending should be done.To do this, you need to dig several posts along the bushes, between which a wire is stretched, no higher than 20 cm from the ground. It is to this wire that the stems are bent and tied. Thus, the lashes will hide under the snow until severe frosts. Nylon tapes or threads are best suited for tying.
What to do if there is little snow in a harsh climate
If the raspberries are planted on a windy part of your site, where snow is blown away in winter, then you need to take care of snow retention in advance. For this purpose, special barriers must be installed on the side from which the wind blows. These can be embedded sheets of plywood or polycarbonate. The latter material, of course, has a number of advantages over plywood, as it is resistant to rot and is not afraid of frost.
Such fences can be attached to trellises running along the raspberry tree. However, it is very important to take into account the direction of the wind. You can check the wind rose for your area, which can be found on the website of the hydrometeorological service of your area.
However, if there is little snow in your area and the frosts remain severe, then the raspberry tree should be additionally covered. Non-woven material, for example, spunbond or lutrasil, can serve as a heat insulator. Before covering, you should bend down. The covering material must be secured to prevent it from being blown away by the wind. In particularly harsh climates, simple arc-shaped structures are additionally built, which are covered with polycarbonate to protect the raspberry tree from death due to the cold.
When to cover and uncover bushes
Branches need to be bent in a timely manner.If you do this ahead of time, the bushes may dry out, and if you do it too late, the stems will become more fragile and may break in the process. So, the optimal time for bending is before the first snowfall, but after the leaves fall from the stems. The same can be said about covering a raspberry tree for the winter, either with a covering non-woven material, or with special polycarbonate structures.
You also need to remove the covering material on time. If you do this ahead of time, the stems will get burned due to large day and night temperature fluctuations. If you covered the bushes, then opening them must be done in several stages. First, the polycarbonate structure is removed, then the non-woven material, and only then the branches are untied and the mulch layer is removed. Otherwise, the raspberry's immunity will decrease. All manipulations for caring for raspberries should be carried out no later than mid-April.
If you follow the instructions above, you will be pleased with your raspberry harvest. In addition, we invite you to watch a video on how to prepare raspberries for winter:
