Michael Cox wrote:No disease, but I know that I have at least two varieties with different growth habits. A primocane and a floricane. It’s been a real pain pruning them because they are all mixed together.
Raspberries and blackberries are all about the root system. If pruning is a pain, just hack the entire patch down in late winter, and let new canes come up afresh. That'd be my normal suggestion, if yours weren't *also* rootbound. I intentionally just ran over my raspberry canes with a
lawn mower a few days ago, since they needed pruning.
Primocane raspberries *also* produce on their floricanes. If the presence of fruiting floricanes is the only indicator, you might just have a single species there.
As the raspberries seem healthy, I'd keep some of the raspberries.
What I'd do is:
1) Whack everything down to about 4" from the ground, to get the canes out of the way.
2) Put the canes in a pile where they can dry and be used as smoking wood for your BBQ. =P
3) Dig up all the raspberries, hacking through entangled root systems with wild abandon.
4) Loosen the soil underneath the bed to a decent depth - a foot or deeper.
5) Put kitchen scraps (especially bananas),
coffee grounds, aged manure, grass clippings, whatever you have available that can compost in-place. Might want to accumulate a week's worth of scraps leading up to the operation.
6) Supplement with good soil if you have any available, maybe several bags of store-bought stuff if you don't have anything for
free.
7) Mix up the loosened old dirt, kitchen scraps, and new soil.
8) Replant the raspberries you want to keep, and any new species you are adding (I also like to put half a banana directly underneath each blackberry or raspberry plant).
9) Cover everything with two inches or more of woodchips, and
water deeply.
10) Dig a small trench in the loose soil inbetween some of your newly replanted raspberries, and as you produce more kitchen scraps for maybe a month after planting, dump them in the trench and cover with dirt to let them compost in-place.
I'm not an expert, so
this is advice from a complete amateur!