Raspberry suckers

These are your new canes. DON"T cut or yank em out. Here is how it works: The June bearing canes that have berries on them this year are going to die off when finished bearing. These you will cut off near the ground when they are dead or almost dead. They will start looking pretty rough near the end. The new canes that are coming up will be the canes that bear next spring, around June or July. So let them be. You may want to cut off any weak or small ones and leave the biggest and strongest live. Next spring these will be the ones that have the fruit and then they will die and the cycle starts over. Some people do trim the tops of these off in early spring-late winter. The thought here is that they will send out side shoots and give you more fruit. Just don't cut off to much, I'd say keep them at about chest high if you do it.

Ever Bearing are treated a little different. These don't really bear continuous. The new canes that you have coming up now in the spring will bear fruit on the top foot or so of the cane come late summer / fall. Once this happens that small portion of the cane will die back. You should cut only the dead part off and leave the rest of the cane. Now come next spring, the part that was still alive will bear fruit and then it will die all the way back and can be cut off near the ground. I find that they will get ripe just about the time your june berries are about half way done, giving you a week or two of more berries. The new canes that are growing at this time will be the ones you get berries off of in the fall, starting this cycle over again. Like the June berries you may want to thin the new growth a little and allow the biggest and strongest canes to live. 

Some people will cut their everbearing canes right down to the ground in the very early spring before new growth starts. By doing this you will only be able to harvest fruit in the fall but you may get a better and bigger crop because when they do start to send up new growth all the energy goes into it and not into trying to produce a spring crop. Personally I don't do this, I don't sell berries and I like that extra time in the spring when I get berries for a little while longer after the june bearers

One last thought. once these plants are established and going good, they will be sending runners all over the place. You can just mow these down or cut them off to keep some order in your beds so you can get at them. If you are growing them in rows, about a foot or two wide is good. Like I said before, just thin out the weak or stunted canes and let the strongest in the rows grow.

Hope that helps.

Mark alias OrganicMan