Raspberry canes,tidying up the summer fuiting raspberries after cutting back

After cutting out the old woody canes that have fruited this year you need to tie in the new growth to the supporting wires. Summer fruiting raspberries are usually grown next to a wires that are stretched horizontally between the supporting posts. Once you have cut back the old canes, you leave the new ones to grow as this will be the raspberry canes that provide next summer's crop of berries.

The new raspberry canes need tying to the wires and to do this I tie them with gardening string, the thicker type is good to work with and is sometimes called just. I never use green plastic string for such jobs as I am trying not to use plastic that rots down, garden string made from natural fibres is a much better choice.

I tie the new raspberry canes to the wires as soon as they are tall enough, I am able to do this reasonably quickly now but when I first started this simple task seemed to take ages to do. If you are not sure how to do this I think the best way to learn is to watch someone else do it or find a book with an illustration of how to tie the canes in. 

The height of the poles you need to put in for your summer fruiting raspberries is just a bit taller than the height the canes will grow to.  I have three wires stretched across, between the poles, a high one, a middle height one and one 6-8 inches above the ground. Pull the weeds out around the raspberry canes as soon as you notice them as raspberries are shallow rooted.

If you are looking for different ways to train raspberry  plants here is a useful link to the Royal Horticultural Society, on this page they give advice on training and pruning summer and autumn fruiting raspberries.

Advice on raspberries from the Royal Horticultural Society

You can now buy plants that produce 'white' raspberries, to me this seems a novelty as I love the jewel colours of the summer fruits. The only way I think I would want to use these new white raspberries is alongside the traditional ones possibly served with a drizzle of chocolate sauce for a dinner party menu. However I still think nothing beats the ruby red colour of raspberries. I suppose the white berries might be good for fooling the birds that thieve them from the plants sometimes, as they seem to judge the ripeness to perfection never taking an unripe raspberry or an over-ripe on.  now we have to wait for the crop of autumn raspberries and hope that we get as good a harvest as we did from the summer ones.