To obtain a good harvest of berries, you should regularly clear the bushes of old, diseased and broken skeletal branches, leaving only well-developed basal or one-year-old young branches.
Gooseberry bushes
A gooseberry bush can form from 18 to 25 skeletal branches with different growth ages. It will bear fruit for 7-8 years without rejuvenation.
You just need to remove broken, old and disease-damaged branches of the plant in time and leave young, one-year-old, basal shoots.
If the gooseberry or currant bushes have become old, you won't be able to get a good harvest from them, because they are already exhausted and are capable of producing only small and insignificant berries. To get a young plant and a good harvest, these bushes can simply be rejuvenated. First, cut off two-thirds of the old and weak branches above the ground.
During the summer, the bushes will send out a lot of young root shoots. You need to leave a few strong, well-formed branches to form the skeleton of the young bush, and the rest should be removed without hesitation.
Next year, all the old branches are cut out completely. Over the summer, new shoots will grow, from which several more of the best and strongest are selected. This is the scheme by which you can rejuvenate the bushes, which will continue to yield berries for a long time.
Raspberry bushes
Raspberry bushes should also be cleaned regularly. The raspberry bush begins to bear fruit only the following year from the appearance of young branches, and then they will simply die off.
It is necessary to thin and remove dry shoots regularly, because the raspberry bush grows many shoots during the growing season, which should not be left all. They can weaken the raspberry bush and reduce or not get a harvest of berries at all.
Raspberries are grown in bush and strip methods.
Bush method. Leave 8 to 12 well-developed and strong one-year shoots. All subsequent ones will grow during the summer.
Next year you will be able to get a good harvest of berries from this bush.
Tape method. Create a continuous tape of replacement shoots and root shoots, which should be 60-70 cm wide and no more than 15-16 pieces of young shoots per 1 sq. m of area. Throughout the season, constantly remove all growing shoots.
The following year after harvesting, cut the entire bush down to the ground, remove it from the area and burn it. The following summer, form a new strip from the new shoots that grow.
In early spring, after the snow melts, pinch the tops of the raspberry branches to a height of about 15 cm. This step-sonning will allow the lateral fruit branches on the raspberry bush to grow and develop.
