First Fruits

Day 340: When you treat everbearing raspberries such as "Heritage" as if they were fall-bearing, you get a higher yield than if you allowed them to produce both a crop both spring and fall. The "treatment" means that you brutally mow them flat after they're done bearing. The growth which emerges the following spring will be entirely primocanes ("primo-" meaning "first") which in the fall behave like floricanes ("flori-" meaning "flowering") and produce fruit in the late season. The two-crop alternative is to prune back this year's floricanes when they've done their job, retaining the primocanes so that they will be floricanes in the spring. But as I mentioned earlier in this essay, that means you'll have a smaller yield overall. Another bonus to treating everbearing bushes as fall-bearing is that you get all those ratty, tatty, leafless raspberry vines out of your yard and you don't have to stare at them all winter. For those of us who consider pruning to be a chore best avoided, getting a heavier crop of tasty raspberries once a year speaks of nothing but advantages, all things considered. Mine are just beginning to ripen now. I lost one to one of my avian friends, ate another one, and picked these two at great hazard from the abundant, buzzy pollinators who are also grateful for a ready supply of fall nectar.