If you purchased your Willamette canes in bare rooted form over winter, they would be “floricanes” i.e. canes that grew last summer and will flower and fruit this summer. Because they would have been quite short when you planted them, however, you won’t get much fruit this year. Just the odd berry or two forming on short lateral branches coming from the main cane. Leave any suckers that come up this summer, as they will be next summer’s fruiting canes.

Just as a point of interest – I try not to use the terms first year and second year to describe berry canes or fruiting branches on a tree. This is really a Northern Hemisphere where the calendar year ends with winter. The terms first summer and second summer are probably a bit less confusing for us in the Southern Hemisphere.

Your idea for a crop rotation workshop is a good one. We actually include quite a lot on crop rotation in our Patch From Scratch workshop, but it’s probably a topic that warrants a course of its own. Will give it some thought.

Cheers,

Justin

This is a tricky one. To manage raspberries properly you really do need to know whether your variety is “summer fruiting” or “autumn fruiting”. Pruning is different for each type. Summer fruiting raspberries form “primocanes” in the first summer, which go dormant over winter, and reshoot again to become “floricanes” (flowering/fruiting canes) the following summer. Autumn fruiting varieties, or everbearers as you call them, flower and fruit on canes formed in the current growing season. To prune autumn fruiters you simply cut all the canes to the ground during winter. With summer fruiters its important to preserve the primocanes for next summer, and only cut out canes that have already fruited.

The problem is compounded because the common names aren’t totally accurate. Most autumn fruiters will bear a small crop of fruit during summer, but the main fruiting season runs from about February to May. Summer fruiters bear mainly from about Christmas to February, with some spot fruiting through autumn.

It’s possible that your canes are an autumn fruiting variety such as Heritage having an early flush of fruit. It’s also possible though, that they are summer fruiters bearing fruit from short lateral branches coming from the main canes. The best advice I can offer is to check with the nursery (or friend) that supplied the canes to see if they know what variety they are. If you can’t get this info, it might be best to treat the plants like summer fruiting raspberries for the first couple of summers. If the canes fruit this summer/autumn, then go dormant, but don’t fruit again next summer, you can just about guarantee that they’re autumn bearers. Another option might be to start again with properly named canes.

Hope that helps,

Justin

Anyway, I’ve kind of been ignoring them as I understand that they don’t fruit until the second year. But I just noticed today my plant is flowering with one green raspberry on it. From my research I’ve found out that ‘everbearing’ raspberries will fruit in the first year, but I thought that was in Autumn. Any advice as to what’s going on? I don’t subscribe to the ‘remove all fruit in first year’ theory – this raspberry will be savoured.
regards
Teresa