Pruning baby berry bushes

Apr 05, 2023 04:43:30

Good morning! Here's the short version of my story. I bought an old dilapidated farm in 2020. Been working on the house (still not liveable) but I started the food forest last summer. No sense waiting, I want my plants to fruit in a coupla years not 2 years after I move in, I'm old!
Mowed down the 6' high weeds/grass in what used to be a very large (front yard?) field beside the house and planted apples, pears, cherries, plums and an apricot, a hardy peach and oh, I am even trying my hand at a hardy Fig!
In between all these gorgeous baby trees are my berries. 5 colours of currants. Coupla blueberries, red and black goji berries, red and black raspberries and red and white strawberries....I also started black goji berry seeds inside and they're sprouting!

Right now I'm most interested in when or if I should prune the baby berry bushes. The fruit trees will get their first 'drastic' hair cut in a coupla weeks but the berries well, that's a lot of research and not all sources know what they're talking about.
Should I just leave the berries alone? The ones who survived their first east coast Canadian winter.

Or do I need to tend them somehow?

Apr 07, 2023 08:36:57

I have read that most berry bushes bear only once on 2-year-old canes.

After the canes have produced fruit, the bushes can be pruned back to the ground to leave room for the stronger, 1-year-old canes.

then some pruning should be done every spring to keep the plants from becoming tangled and to improve their ability to bear.

My experience was with only one bush which was never pruned and wild bushes which were never pruned.

Based on the above information I can only assume since I never pruned mine that the fruit was on new branches.

I hope this has helped.

Apr 07, 2023 10:06:46

Anne Miller wrote:I have read that most berry bushes bear only once on 2-year-old canes.

After the canes have produced fruit, the bushes can be pruned back to the ground to leave room for the stronger, 1-year-old canes.

then some pruning should be done every spring to keep the plants from becoming tangled and to improve their ability to bear.

Wasn’t this the case for raspberries?

We have old red currant bushes, they do make more multible years in a row in their canes. I have only pruned dead branches.

Apr 07, 2023 10:13:41

I just remember reading here on the forum. Like I said I didn't prune mine.

This is the best example I found though there are some other threads about blackberries and raspberries.

Stacie Kim said, "Blueberries bear fruit on 2nd year growth, so you'll miss this next year's harvest. But wow, they should produce gangbusters the following year, after a good haircut!

I copied this quote from the LSU Ag Center website regarding blackberries: "Primocane blackberries produce berries on the current-season growing cane. This differs from standard blackberries that produce on 2-year-old canes. Floricane blackberries bear fruit on 2-year-old canes. The new growth that is produced in the spring and summer will not bear fruit that year but will produce berries the following year." So depending on which varieties of blackberries you have, you might or might not get some fruit the same year. Either way, tidying up the brambles would be a healthy thing.

https://permies.com/t/154416/Officially#1209757

Apr 07, 2023 10:42:46

My recommendation is to consider what is being pruned and why before pruning. What I'm getting at is plants and trees need leaves to capture sunlight to manufacture carbohydrates among other things and that is their energy for growth. Some of this energy goes immediately into current growth for this year, but a lot of those carbohydrates are sent back down the trunk into the roots where it is stored and is the energy that plants and trees rely upon for the initial blossoming and leafing out in early spring. The energy for early spring growth has to come from somewhere as there are no leaves on fruiting bushes and trees over winter to capture energy, so it comes from the roots. So, by pruning and removing limbs that contain all the sugar factory leaves, it holds the potential to retard that years growth and the amount of energy that it can store in the roots for next years spring blossoming and leaf-out. Pruning does indeed stimulate a bush or tree to grow more limbs, but keep in mind this energy comes from somewhere. This has more of an impact on young bushes and trees than it does on older established ones with large, mature roots full of stored energy. I planted my blueberry bushes 4 years ago and have yet to prune them once. I want them to get bushy and capture as much sunlight as possible while they initially get established and grow to size. I also planted fruit trees at the same time, and a couple months ago this winter I pruned only what was growing back up into the center of the tree in order to prevent crowding. I left many of my fruit trees unpruned.

Something else to consider when pruning is it creates an open wound. This can have two potential negative consequences, those being 1) airborne spores of pathogens than can possibly make a tree of bush sick have an easy point of entry, and 2) pruning while a tree is growing can possibly result in excessive sap weeping out the wound, and that watery sap is the energy, the blood of the tree and it needs to not be oozing out of a wound. The best time to prune anything is when it is dormant in the winter as airborne pathogenic spores are at a minimum, and there is no sap flow. The pruning wound will become dry and crusty before spring which helps halt any sap from oozing out and helps reduce a chance of infection since the tissue a spore may land on is not living.

Apr 07, 2023 15:39:29

I've never pruned a berry bush, other than to keep them from getting too unruly. Berry canes, on the other hand, I've no qualms about mowing down an entire patch, just to take a year off, and refresh the rejuvenate them.

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