When growing raspberry bushes, understanding the right techniques and the right time to prune helps you enjoy the most abundant, delicious harvest. However, when and how to prune raspberries depends on the variety you’re growing. 

Follow this expert-approved raspberry pruning guide to produce higher yields, control diseases and keep your bushes from looking untidy.

When to Prune Raspberries

A common raspberry pruning mistake is not understanding that when to make the chops depends on whether you have floricane (summer-bearing) or primocane (fall-bearing) varieties. 

Tate explains that floricane-bearing raspberries produce fruit on second-year canes (woody upright stems) that then die off.

“Floricane-bearing raspberry bushes bear fruit in early summer, and pruning should take place after harvest,” Tate says.

Primocane-bearing raspberry varieties naturally produce two crops before the biennial canes die off. The first crop arrives in the late summer or early fall, at the end of the current year’s (primocane) growth. When left to grow, these become floricanes, producing a further crop in the summer of their second year of growth.

“Primocane-bearing raspberries produce the most fruit on the current year canes (newest canes), and later in the year,” ISA-certified arborist Allen Tate says. “Cutting these down each dormant season allows these canes to regrow new each spring, facilitating the most fruit yield.

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How to Prune Raspberries

When learning how to prune raspberries, the techniques you use also depend on the variety you’re growing. 

Pruning Summer-Bearing (Floricane) Raspberries

For summer-bearing red and yellow raspberry varieties, follow the pruning steps below.

1. Remove spent floricanes that have already fruited, cutting them down to ground level after the summer harvest.
2. Remove weak, diseased, dying, or dead canes during the dormancy phase at the end of winter or early spring.
3. Thin out the remaining one-year-old primocanes so they are spaced around 6 inches apart. This prevents overcrowding and promotes good air circulation and access to light.
4. Cut off the tips of any canes that show signs of winter injury. Pruning back to the live section means removing around 1/4 of the top of the cane.
5. Use a spade to remove suckering shoots growing more than 2 feet beyond the hedgerow to prevent these vigorous bushes from becoming messy and making your garden look bad.

Pruning Fall-Bearing (Primocane) Raspberries

You’ve got two options for pruning fall-bearing raspberries. The simplest one is to prune to produce one large, healthy, and hardy fall crop.

1. Prune all canes back to the ground towards the end of the dormancy period and before new growth appears in March or early April.
2. Remove suckering ground shoots growing outside a 2-foot radius of the bush center to maintain a tidy, controlled growth habit.

If you want to take advantage of a summer and fall crop, leave some primocanes behind after the fall harvest rather than cutting them all back. These will form into floricanes that produce fruit the following summer. 

5 Reasons Why You Should Prune Raspberries

“Raspberries grow quickly and can get over-crowded and, well, kind of messy in just one growing season,” Tate says. However, cutting back these bushes is important for more than just aesthetic reasons.  

• Stimulates growth: “Raspberries, like the majority of fruit-bearing plants, need some amount of thinning to stimulate new growth and maintain space and energy for the parts that bear the most fruit,” Tate says.
• Promotes air circulation: Too many canes close together prevent the free flow of air. This can affect photosynthesis and lead to excess humidity and pest or fungal problems.
• Lets in light: “Even though these plants are shade tolerant (to an extent), light stimulates flower production,” Tate says. Overcrowding prevents light from reaching all parts of your raspberry plants, stunting growth and reducing crop yields.
• Reduces risk of disease and pest infestations: Weak and dying canes are more susceptible to developing diseases or being overrun by bugs.
• Encourages a higher crop yield: Cutting back spent canes directs the energy to new growth, helping to produce a healthier and heftier fruit harvest. 

4 Raspberry Pruning Tips 

Successful raspberry pruning is about more than just cutting the right canes at the right time. The following pruning tips will help you produce a bountiful harvest.

• Wear gardening gloves: “Thorns on these plants are typically inconsequential, but protecting yourself from any possible pokes and pricks is a good idea,” Tate says.
• Pick the best pruning shears: Tate says a good pair of sterile hand shears, like ARS #2, is all you really need. Blunt shears make the job more laborious, and ragged open cuts take longer to heal, making your plant more vulnerable to diseases.
• Dispose of cut canes carefully: Bag and bin your cut canes. Adding them to a compost pile increases the risk of spreading common raspberry plant diseases and pests.
• Stake or trellis: Providing support helps promote better light and air access, and it makes it easier to prune and harvest fruit.