One of my favorite things is being able to head out into the yard to pick fresh fruit from my gardens during the summer. These beautiful raspberries grew in my garden last summer and I just finished my spring clean-up.
Spring is the perfect time to get your raspberry patch or rows in order while there are no leaves yet and it is easy to see what is going on. Overall you want to limit the spread of your raspberry row to about 12″ so trim out those buggers trying to come up 2′ away from where they should be. For the next part it helps if you know what variety you have and if it is a summer bearing or fall bearing type. Raspberry canes only live for two seasons. Summer bearing raspberry types only produce fruit on second year canes. Fall bearing raspberries produce fruit on current year’s growth.
So here is what my raspberries looked like this winter ( I have summer bearing).
If you have summer bearing raspberries you can cut back all the live canes to about 4′.
Next prune out the dead canes, cutting them back to the ground.
Fall bearing can be cut back to ground before new growth starts in spring giving you one late summer or fall crop.
Also plan on fertilizing your raspberries in the spring by adding a good layer of compost and/or applying a balanced fertilizer. Raspberries are heavy feeders so this step is important. Also keep the area well weeded to reduce competition from those plants and minimize your chances of plant diseases.