Raspberry care after harvesting in July and August - how to feed and what else to do

Any plant goes through a full cycle of vegetation, and raspberries are no exception. Growing and covered with green leaves in early spring, in the summer it blooms and bears fruit, delighting gardeners with juicy fragrant berries, and in autumn it needs to rest. In order for all stages of plant life to pass without problems, it is necessary to care for raspberries. And if in the spring the owners of the plots water, weed, feed and mulch perennial bushes, then after harvesting, many do not get their hands to care for them. However, for regular successful fruiting, raspberry needs care after harvesting, and it consists in standard events (top dressing, watering, and others) and in special events that provide raspberries with good vegetation for the next year.

How to care for raspberries in the summer after fruiting, when the berries are already picked

Different varieties of raspberries produce crops at different times in the summer:

• early to feast on in early July;
• mid-season - in the second half of the middle summer month;
• late and remontant - in August.
  

  Different varieties of raspberries ripen at different times.

Raspberries require a long warm period for ripening, with air temperatures up to 25 ° C. If the summer is cold, the berries will sing long and unfriendly.

In addition, a crop of fragrant sweet berries is harvested at different times depending on the place of raspberry cultivation. In the south, fruiting ends already in late June, and in the northern regions - only by the end of August. Therefore, care for raspberries in the summer after fruiting begins at different times.

Pruning shoots in July-August

This is one of the most important aspects of raspberry farming. After all, if you do not cut the lignified shoots that brought the berries, next year there will be problems with the crop. For traditional and repairing varieties, pruning technology differs:

• in raspberries with a two-year fruiting cycle (traditional, in which the berries grow on the shoots of the second years) pruned shoots are cut off and leave several (up to 10) of the strongest young stems of the current of the year;
  

  In traditional varieties of raspberries, pruned lignified shoots are pruned

• near the remont raspberries cut off all the shoots.

Pruning is carried out with a clean pruner as close to the ground as possible so as not to leave infected shoots. Cut branches are burned or carried away from the site. You can’t put them in compost so as not to spread the pathogens.

Watering and mulching after harvest

If the summer is wet, you should not water raspberries after picking berries, so as not to provoke excessive growth of young shoots. And if there is no rain at all and the weather is hot, then the raspberry will need moisture in the second half of summer, since after pruning the old shoots, flower buds are laid on new ones. And you will also need weekly plentiful irrigation of remont raspberries.

Watering is carried out at the rate of a bucket of water per 1 m² plantings (or half a bucket for each bush, if raspberries do not grow by tape) twice a month. After watering, the bushes are mulched with mowed grass or rotted sawdust.

Treatments from diseases and pests before the end of the summer season

After removing the berries, raspberries are processed from pests. You can use fairly strong insecticides, without fear of making the berries unsuitable for food. After all, insects that eat leaves and branches of a perennial shrub do not stop doing this at the end of summer. The most favorite summer residents insecticides help from various pests.

Table: against what are the main pests and how to process raspberries after harvest

Photo Gallery: Raspberry Insecticides

From diseases raspberries are treated with fungicides (1% Bordeaux mixture) only at the very end of the growing season, when the leaves have already fallen. In summer, you can loosen the soil under the bushes and remove part of the foliage that they have already thrown off. On this work to protect the raspberry is completed.

Diagram of top dressing raspberries after fruiting

The raspberry must be fertilized. After harvesting the berries under raspberry bushes, weed should be weeded and the soil loosened to 10 cm so that the fertilizers penetrate the soil better.

Before top dressing, you need to find out the composition of the soil under the raspberry. If it is clayey and heavy, the rate of all substances is increased by one and a half times.

Late-summer feeding of raspberries is needed so that the young shoots are sufficiently developed, strengthened and ready for wintering. Having received enough nutrition in the previous year, raspberry bushes will give a greater harvest next summer.

When and how to feed the bushes

The standard fertilizer application after harvesting raspberries is as follows:

• potassium, which strengthens the roots of raspberries, and it better assimilates nutrients from the soil, preparing for wintering. You can use to choose from:
  • wood ash (scattered under the bushes, slightly digging the ground, followed by abundant watering) - 200 g per 1 m²;
  • potassium sulfate (fertilizer without chlorine, which raspberries do not like) - 30-60 g per 1 m²;
    

    Potassium sulfate does not contain chlorine, so it’s good for raspberries

  • kalimagnesia (in its composition there is, in addition to potassium, magnesium, without which the leaves may fall prematurely);
• green manure (white mustard, vetch or clover) is planted in row-spacings in order to mow the grown plantings in the fall and plant them in the soil under raspberries, enriching them with useful substances.

It is not necessary to feed raspberries before pruning, as fertilizers are "sprayed" not only on new shoots, but also on old ones that must be removed.

If raspberry leaves have a non-standard color (purple, violet), it is necessary to fertilize it with phosphorus, without waiting for the autumn digging of the soil.

It is better to use an extract from double superphosphate, in the composition of which the necessary element will quickly reach the plants. To do this, you need:

1. 20 tablespoons of superphosphate pour 3 liters of hot water.
   

   If raspberries do not have enough phosphorus, after harvesting, you need to feed it with a hood from double superphosphate

2. Insist, strain.
3. Dissolve 150 ml of the prepared liquid in 10 l of water.
4. Add 20 ml of nitrogen fertilizer and half a liter of ash.

My raspberries grow on heavy clay soils. Around the middle of summer, during the setting and ripening of berries, its leaves turn dark red, almost purple. I know that this indicates a lack of phosphorus, and I always water the bushes under the root with an extract from double superphosphate. After a few days, the result is obvious: the raspberry leaves are again bright green. By the way, berries after such a shake become noticeably larger.

At the end of summer, raspberries are not needed nitrogen, since too active growth of young shoots will weaken the plant before wintering.

Raspberry normalization after harvesting and root shoot removal

If raspberry is grown by tape, after fruiting it must be normalized, that is, remove all shoots that go beyond the tape. For this:

• the width of the bushes is 40 cm;
• the distance between the shoots is not less than 15 cm.

With this type of cultivation, about 12-15 stems per 1 m remain².

In addition, you need to cut young shoots, called root offspring. They are formed as a result of aging raspberries, when its rhizome branches and every year it gets closer to the surface. As a result of this phenomenon, many small young shoots appear. If there is no need to propagate a specific bush, the root shoot must be removed by carefully cutting it off the main bush with a shovel and throwing it away.

If the mother bush is already old (he was 6 years old or more), these shoots can be used to rejuvenate raspberry. In spring, when the root shoot grows to 25 cm, it is cut off from the bush, planted in a new place, and the mother bush is dug up and burned to destroy a possible source of disease.

Video: how to care for raspberries

Gardeners reviews

On the repair raspberries I bring in manure and 2 more foliar top dressings with full mineral fertilizer with microelements in chelated form. But the result is 110 liters with 12 meters of raspberries. And a little more.

Nothing tragic happens if you leave this thread. Only, if it is a truly repairing variety, do not expect a big crop on this branch. Do not be discouraged if it does not bloom at all. The next year, the old branch will turn into dead wood next year. It will be easy for her to simply break her hand. Repairing varieties produce the main crop on the green shoots of the current year: the shoots that you have to appear from the ground in the spring. Here they will be harvested in the fall.

Last year’s bushes, having given the first crop, begin to dry out along with the remaining berries (apparently, they have such a constitution). Without waiting for the bushes to completely dry, I cut them out, and leave these branches immediately under the bushes as mulch. In the vacated place, young people begin to "spike". I also check them, leaving only the strongest with the already formed color buds. The rest is under the pruner! They really do not have time to ripen before the fall. And the less raspberries will be, the stronger the bushes and the more hope for the crop!

Care for the raspberry plantation continues throughout the growing season. For the future harvest, events after the harvest of berries are especially important. All of them are aimed at making the prolific bush grow stronger and increase its immunity before a harsh winter.