Content
Special attention is paid to berry bushes, including raspberries, when the summer season begins and until winter. To pamper the family with delicious berries throughout the summer period, agronomists recommend planting different varieties of raspberries on the site. To maximize the harvest in the season, it is important to provide the bushes with proper care.
This article will discuss how to care for raspberries in the fall. From it you will learn how to prune a raspberry tree, how to fertilize a crop and what you need to know about preparing raspberries for winter.
How to prune raspberry bushes correctly
The pruning stage of shrub formation plays an important role in the care of raspberries. All excess shoots must be removed. In this case, you can thin out the raspberry tree and form beautiful bushes. This is important, because during the cold season, the bush will spend a lot of vitality to maintain the life of the stems, and if you do not prune, then it simply will not have enough strength for wintering.
Another important benefit of pruning is that it makes it easier to deal with harmful insects. Fungi and pests tend to accumulate on the tops of raspberry leaves and stems, so pruning can be easily and reliably removed.
Warning! In November, raspberry bushes shed their leaves, which may contain pathogenic microorganisms. Once in the ground, they will penetrate to 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 off the stems in order to remove all pests and viruses from the site.
Pruning helps to clear the plant of excess shoots, which will improve the nutrition of the bush. About 9 shoots should remain on one bush. In this case, juicy and large berries can be expected in the next season. If you leave more shoots, then the berries will ripen at different times, since the raspberry bush will not have enough strength to feed all the fruits. The berries will be not only small, but also sour, so it will not be possible to evaluate the taste of the variety.
Proper pruning increases the yield of raspberries. Berries are formed on annual shoots, tied to biennial branches. In remontant varieties, berries appear on one-year-old shoots. So, to increase yields, pruning should be carried out in October.
There are 3 types of raspberry pruning:
- Regular.
- Double.
- To shorten.
Regular cropping
With normal pruning before winter, about 70% of the shoots are removed. Some gardeners remove the entire stem. The pruning technique depends entirely on the type of raspberry. Cultivars with good vegetation are cut completely. By the beginning of the summer of the next season, the shoots can reach up to 1 m in height. If the growth of the plant is slow, then the cut of the shoots is carried out by 50–70%.
Double cropping
For all raspberry varieties, the double pruning method can be used, however, it is usually used when caring for remontant varieties of berry bushes. In this case, it is worth considering the activity of plant growth.
The crown should be lush, because this is the only way to expect abundant fruiting. So, the growth point is shortened twice a year: in autumn and spring. Thanks to this, the shrub grows in all directions.With timely pruning in the fall, new shoots and branches will yield a larger crop next year.
Pruning to shortening
Raspberry pruning for shortening involves cutting off the entire aerial part of the bush. This method is suitable for bushes with weak vegetation and low yields. Thus, you can remove pests by removing them from the raspberry beds. In addition, shortening allows you to increase the yield of shrubs, since pruning stimulates the development of two-year shoots.
Cleansing raspberries 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. It is important to do this, as in fallen leaves and cut off stems they can overwinter and multiply. pests and pathogenic bacteria, as a result of which the entire raspberry tree will suffer.
The same can be said for the grass that can grow in the raspberry tree. Pests can also hibernate in it, so weeding the beds is included in caring for raspberries.
Destruction of insects on and around raspberry bushes
Raspberry processing in the fall includes the destruction of harmful insects. To destroy them in the raspberry tree, it is carried out bushes processing and the soil around them. To do this, after picking the berries, spray the bushes with Fufan in a proportion of 10 ml of the preparation per 10 liters of water. One bush and the ground around it takes on average 1–1.5 liters of liquid. Another effective drug against pests is Actellik. One ampoule should be diluted with 2 liters of water. You also need to process raspberries by spraying, at 10 m2 there is about 1.5 liters of liquid.
Another insect repellent comes in tablets. So, in 10 liters of water you need to dissolve 1 tablet of Intavir. All bushes are sprayed with this solution. If you need to process 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
Raspberry care includes autumn feeding of shrubs. This is necessary in order to rebalance the soil, which will contribute to a bountiful harvest in the coming season. In addition, making fertilizers positively affects the stems of shrubs. With the right approach to this matter, the stems by winter will increase in diameter, stiffen and stock up on the necessary amount of nutrients that will help them successfully cope with frosts and severe winter cold.
IN feeding need those varieties of raspberries that are prone to shortening and normal pruning. Depending on the variety, it is necessary to apply fertilizers to the soil starting from August, well, or in September.
After 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 carbamide. It is better to apply a small dose of fertilizer for the first time, and after some time, repeat the feeding. The drug in a dose of 50 g is diluted in 10 l of water.
This product can be replaced with organics. 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. So, the leaves acquire a more intense green color, and the growth of the stems is accelerated.
Spring raspberry care implies the introduction of nitrogen-containing fertilizers into the soil. This speeds up the metabolism of the plant, which stimulates its growth and increases the volume of young shoots.
If you cut raspberries at the root for the winter, then in the second half of October you should apply 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 cannot survive the harsh winters. Under these 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 the cords to tie the 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 activity is carried out so that the raspberry bushes are completely under the snow in winter.
Breeders have developed frost-resistant raspberry varieties such as Solnyshko, Gusar and Yellow Giant. They do not need bending. The stems of these varieties are tied into bunches, which are tied to a peg. Such an event will protect the stems from gusty winter winds and the adhesion of wet snow.
So, caring for a raspberry tree includes pruning, feeding and protecting the bushes from frost. If you follow the recommendations outlined in the article, you will get a bountiful harvest of raspberries next season.
We suggest you also watch a video on this topic:
