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Hey guys,

Could anyone help me with pruning my raspberries? The are Everbearing "Heritage Raspberries"
I planted two small bushes last year. They looked like this when I first planted/purchased them.
Then here they were in late September
They now look like this. Sorry for the crappy photos.
You can see the canes that still have left over buds, while the others do not. So, I'm not sure exactly why it is, but it seems some of the canes did fruit while others did not. Can anyone help identify what should be pruned and what should be left alone?

Hi
Heritage are Primocane raspberries.
This means they crop on canes that grow in the same year, and they crop slowly through from late June through to the first frosts.
The other sort of rasps are the Floricanes. These crop on the canes that grew the previous year, and they crop in one big flush of fruit.
Pruning yourHeritage . First remove all the canes that cropped last year. Then you have two options.
You can cut all the canes off at ground level and the new cane will grow in the spring and start cropping from around late June.
If you want a few early berries then you can leave a few of the stronger canes that haven't cropped and tie them to some sort of support wires. These give you a few berries while the new canes grow. But the penalty will be that they will take some of the strength that would have gone into the new cane.
The choice is yours.
The great benefit of the Primocane is the fact that it does not require elaborate support systems.
Hope that helps. Good luck.

JONA wrote:Hi
Heritage are Primocane raspberries.
This means they crop on canes that grow in the same year, and they crop slowly through from late June through to the first frosts.
The other sort of rasps are the Floricanes. These crop on the canes that grew the previous year, and they crop in one big flush of fruit.
Pruning yourHeritage . First remove all the canes that cropped last year. Then you have two options.
You can cut all the canes off at ground level and the new cane will grow in the spring and start cropping from around late June.
If you want a few early berries then you can leave a few of the stronger canes that haven't cropped and tie them to some sort of support wires. These give you a few berries while the new canes grow. But the penalty will be that they will take some of the strength that would have gone into the new cane.
The choice is yours.
The great benefit of the Primocane is the fact that it does not require elaborate support systems.
Hope that helps. Good luck.

Thanks!

I am still curious though, you say that primocanes crop on canes that grew that year, so why did not all of the canes grow fruit?

How much of the old canes should I leave above the ground or should they essentially be flush?

Also,

If anyone could give me any tips for moving these bushes to a new location I would appreciate it. I would like to move these bushes, preferrably once the ground has thawed, but I am unsure about how I should approach this.

Raspberries all produce canes. On the Primocane varieties these canes can produce fruit the same year that they grow. However some canes don't start to grow till later in the year and are not mature enough to actually fruit. These are the ones that you could leave to give you a small crop earlier in the year while you wait for the new cane to grow. Also strong canes that have cropped can be tipped back to a point below where they cropped and these too will give an early crop the following spring.
Personally, I find it a lot easier to cut the whole lot down in the autumn after cropping and let the plant start anew in the spring.

As regards moving the plant. You can transplant canes any time while they in winter dormancy. Just dig up and replant at the same depth.
It can pay to plant rasps on a low ridge....this is because although they love plenty of water, they hate sitting with wet feet if you get a lot of rain or are on heavy soils. They can be prone to root rots if they sit in very wet soil for too long.

Thanks so much John.

Any idea how much of a root ball I should leave for these plants?

As with most plants Wisconsindead, as much of the root as you can.
However.....raspberries are toughies. They will take being moved with very little root ball.
In fact if you are moving established stools ( the term used for the clump of roots that develop around each original planting), you may have to remove most of the soil from the roots If you want to devide them