In other
words, you restrict the whole force of the plant to the precise
work required--the giving of berries. As the original plants grow
older, they will show a constantly decreasing tendency to throw up
new shoots, but as long as they continue to grow, let only those
survive which are designed to bear the following season.
The canes of cultivated raspberries are biennial. A young and in
most varieties a fruitless cane is produced in one season; it
bears in July the second year, and then its usefulness is over. It
will continue to live in a half-dying way until fall, but it is a
useless and unsightly life. I know that it is contended by some
that the foliage on the old canes aids in nourishing the plants;
but I think that, under all ordinary circumstances, the leaves on
the young growth are abundantly sufficient. By removing the old
canes after they have borne their fruit, an aspect of neatness is
imparted, which would be conspicuously absent were they left.
Every autumn, before laying the canes down, I should shorten them
in one-third. The remaining two-thirds will give more fruit by
actual measurement, and the berries will be finer and larger, than
if the canes were left intact. From first to last the soil about
the foreign varieties should be maintained in a high degree of
fertility and mellowness.
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