The weather hasn’t been the best recently, the cold nights are definitely glooming over us all. It’s important to maintain positivity with day to day life, especially in the Winter months, as it is known that the colder seasons can cause a negative effect on people’s moods. We’re not trying to fast forward to Summer too quick, but it is nice to have plans in place ready for when the sun is back. We have teamed up with fruit specialists, Pomona Fruits, to find out their ultimate growing guide for raspberry canes, so you can be ready to grow lots of exciting new fruits when Summer comes back around.

Planting Raspberry Canes

It is important to make sure you plant them in the ground that has not already had raspberries in there before, this is because the previous crop will have left dormant “replant” virus in the soil that will then affect the growth of subsequent plantings. It is vital that raspberries have fertile neutral soil in order to crop well, with good drainage in full sun.

It is a good idea to buy your canes in the Summer season so you can then plant them straight away, all raspberries need support, except shorter varieties which take less looking after.

Pruning Different Varieties

There are 3 different types of raspberry canes and with each one then pruning varies.

Long canes should be immediately trained up once they have been planted and put up against the supporting wires. It is important to remember that you cannot prune them at all when planting or the heavy crop expected in the first year will be lost.

To encourage new growth and establishment, make sure you cut all stems back on summer fruiting varieties to 30cm above ground at the time of planting.

The same as the Summer variety, Autumn varieties need to have their canes cut back to 30cm above ground at the time of planting. However, you then prune them in Winter by cutting back all canes to ground level, which then clears the way for the new cane to grow and fruit in the following year.

Feeding Your Raspberry Canes

When the weather is dry you need to water the raspberry canes thoroughly once a week, especially during their first Spring and Summer. If you have decided to grow your canes in a pot then they will need to be fed regularly during Spring and early Summer with a balanced liquid feed – you will also need to make sure they have fresh compost to root into each year!

We hope you have learned a lot from the above and make lots of plans for planting new fruits when Summer comes around!

Elliot Grant

Welcome to Motivational’s. This is Elliot Grant, fitness fanatic, and your go to advisor and blog post writer, putting your fitness first.