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Fall Garden

Fall Raspberry

Canes of fall bearing raspberries also live only two years _ but the new canes jump the gun and squeeze in the beginnings of a crop toward the end of their first season. Once new canes reach a certain height, fruiting begins at their tips and then works its way down the cane until stopped by cold weather.

These canes finish their job the next year, bearing fruits in midsummer lower down, where they left off fruiting in fall. Fall bearing raspberries are sometimes called everbearing raspberries, which, literally, they almost are.

Take Fallgold, for instance, a variety yielding golden orange fruits with delicately sweet flavor. No sooner does the July crop _ on last year's stems _ wane than you notice little flower buds beginning to stud the tips of the new canes. Despite the "fall" in this variety's name, Fallgold pumps out golden treats well before fall, in late summer.

Pruning keeps all raspberries healthy and productive, and the procedure for fall bearing varieties is slightly different from that for conventional, summer bearing ones. Because stems of both die after their second season, they need to be cut to the ground either right after they finish fruiting in summer or during the winter that follows.

As far as the other stems of fall bearing raspberries, the ones that start to bear in the latter part of their first season of growth: Sometime during their first winter, these stems should be shortened to just below where they bore fruit. Remnants of fruit stalks along the young stems clearly tell you where to cut.

There is another, even easier, way to prune fall bearing raspberries, and that is to just lop the whole planting clear to the ground each winter. Use pruning shears, lopper, heavy duty mower, whatever it takes; no finesse is needed.

The next spring, the perennial roots will push out new stems that will begin bearing in late summer. Chop the whole planting down again the following winter, and the cycle repeats itself, and so on year after year.

This brutal way of pruning does sacrifice the midsummer crop, which would be borne on canes in their second year. But balance this loss against the ease of this method of pruning. Also, cutting down all canes avoids some disease problems and leaves nothing for deer to munch on in winter.

There aren't nearly as many varieties of fall bearing raspberries as summer bearing ones. Heritage is easy to grow but not all that tasty. At the other end of the flavor spectrum are varieties such as Caroline and Fallgold. Fallgold is so good that you may consider it worth the trouble of selective pruning rather than mowing each year.