- I know, it's a pain in the butt to prune, okay?

I feel you but it's so important.

Pruning not only helps your fruit production but it also strengthens your plants and gets rid of all the diseases that may be or most likely are living in your berry patch.

If you want good fruit and you want it to continue to produce, you need to prune every year.

Get it under control.

(lively music) Welcome to my berry patch.

Yeah, it doesn't look like much now but in a few months, I'm gonna be very happy.

Over here, I have my raspberries.

Over here, I have my blackberries.

Right here, I have my strawberries.

I am in berry heaven come about June.

And what do I do with all those berries?

So much.

We freeze a ton of them so that we can have 'em all winter long.

But I love making a good old blackberry pie.

I use my raspberries to sprinkle on my oatmeal or I make a peach cobbler and then put the berries on top of it.

(host licking fingers) I'm thinking about that right now, just like a good old dollop of whipped cream.

But there are so many things that you can do with berries.

I planted my berries on the west side of the garden.

The big reason is they get that nice east sun.

I have this big hedge, this yew that runs along the side that provides the perfect amount of shade so that they don't get hit with that west sun setting heat.

One thing I also do in the summertime is I do provide shade cloth for my berries just for that extra protection.

You don't want your beautiful berries to have sun scalding because it gets too hot.

So I will put a cover on top of them come mid-June.

So for my raspberries, what I have loved is I plant Joan Js.

These berries are awesome.

They're everbearing.

They're super hardy.

You can plant 'em in zone four.

They're also heat tolerant.

They have a fantastic flavor and the berries will hold really well in the fridge too.

They're super plump and big, and they're thornless.

If you learn anything from me is get thornless varieties.

There's too many thorns and things that are gonna jab you in the garden.

So whenever you can, find something thornless.

I get berries from this bush from starting in June, all the way until first frost.

One year, it made it even to Thanksgiving.

As for my Blackberries, I have the most delicious, the most wonderful berry there is, the Thornless Triple Crown.

They are a heat-tolerant variety and they're super hardy.

These things will grow like weeds, so you gotta make sure that you keep 'em under control.

What I love about the Triple Crown is they're juicy, big, wonderful fruits that start in July and go till the beginning of August.

Now, before we get into pruning, I just wanna remind you that we have an awesome video all about raspberry care in our Modern Gardener video lineup.

So if you haven't, go subscribe and go find that video so that you can have the best berries this summer.

A little bit of terminology that we need to know.

Primocane and floricane and what the difference is.

Primocane means that the fruit is going to bear on the vines or the canes that come up that season.

So the great thing is with primocanes, you can cut 'em straight down to the ground and you're still gonna get tons of berries.

If you plant primocane in the springtime, you, get my fingers crossed, we'll be very lucky to have some fruit come fall.

Floricane, it's not quite that easy.

You're gonna get berries that will come from the canes that grew last year.

So what grew and didn't produce fruit last year are your floricanes that you're gonna get fruit from this year and you have to remove everything else.

So you gotta get a little picky.

The nice thing is Mother Nature makes it easy and will show us which ones to choose, which ones are floricane and which ones you need to pull out because of the color distinction.

Another thing about floricane, if you plant a variety in spring, you're most likely not going to get any fruit until the following year and even then, it's gonna be a small harvest.

By year three, which is always the magic year in a garden, you're gonna have tons of fruit.

Another great thing about primocane, you really don't need a trellis.

I still do just because of my small space but it really doesn't need trellising.

Floricane, on the other hand, those vines get long, like six feet long and they get all ropey and windy.

So you definitely wanna have some kind of trellising or some kind of structure to hold the fruit up.

A lot of people wanna know when is the best time to prune your berries?

And that usually is about March, mid-March, early April.

That's your best time.

Gotta make sure your temps aren't too cold.

If they are, they can do more damage to the cane than good.

So tools I have while I'm pruning, of course, ugh, my trusty gloves.

Don't go anywhere without those.

Loppers for those really big ones.

Snips.

And this is my new favorite tool.

Unless you have a ton to prune, you probably don't wanna spend the money on this but I really, really love this tool a lot.

(tool whirring) Are we ready to prune?

Let's do it.

(lively music) You can see the difference with the one that is green or they have a darker red tone to it.

Those are the canes that we're gonna keep.

Anything that's kind of more woody, light in color doesn't have that nice maroon to it, then that means it's dead and we're cutting it out.

Okay, here's a perfect example of a cane that we're cutting out.

This bore fruit last year.

No, it's no good.

I'm gonna toss that.

So the ones that are red and have that green to it, this is its second year.

This is the one that's going to produce fruit.

This is the floricane that we wanna keep.

Everybody else, they gotta get out.

Again, see the difference in color, that red versus the brown.

That's what we wanna get rid of.

(lively music) (plants rustling) Okay, so you can see that we had a borer that came in here and it caused this black stuff.

There might be eggs in here.

This is why we want to remove this.

These floricane, they keep producing by having these long vines, and then the tips of it, you can see will reach the ground and they will start forming roots.

That's how they continue to propagate.

That's why you have to cut and keep pruning every year.

Otherwise, you're just going to have canes that continue to grow in the ground that don't produce fruit and a huge mess.

So this one's gonna bear fruit for me this year, but it's really tall.

I'm gonna cut it.

(tool whirring) I'm gonna give it a nice haircut so that it doesn't start growing roots.

I'm also gonna cut off all the little skinny scraggly ones.

They're not gonna produce, they're gonna take up space like this guy.

Not worth keeping.

We want it to have, not necessarily totally thick but definitely thicker than this.

Ideal is a good like pencil width.

Pencil width is probably what you wanna keep.

Anything smaller than that, take it off.

(lively music) (tool whirring) My Joan J, those are primocane.

I can cut those down, have no problem at all.

Very easy.

The fruit is going to bear on the vines or the canes that come up that season.

So the great thing is with primocane, you can cut 'em straight down to the ground and you're still gonna get tons of berries.

Well, I hope you enjoyed pruning as much as I did.

I hope you guys subscribe and make sure to make comments.

I'd love to hear what kind of berries you grow and what your best method is for growing.

(host grunting) Goodbye.

(lively music)