How to Prune Raspberries and Soft Fruit After Harvest (UK)

If you've got raspberry canes, blackcurrant bushes, or a row of gooseberries in your garden, late July through August is the window that decides how well they'll fruit next year. Pruning soft fruit after harvest is not complicated, but getting it right makes the difference between a handful of berries and a glut big enough to freeze and jam. Here is what to do and when, plant by plant.

Why Prune Soft Fruit at All?

Soft fruit plants have a straightforward lifecycle. They grow canes or stems, produce fruit, and then those fruited parts start to decline. If you leave them, the plant wastes energy maintaining dead or dying wood that could go into next year's crop. Pruning after harvest clears out what has fruited, opens the plant up to light and air circulation, and makes room for fresh growth that will carry the following season's berries.

It also keeps the plant at a manageable size, which anyone who has let a blackberry loose for a season will appreciate.

Pruning Summer-Fruiting Raspberries

Summer-fruiting raspberries (Cascade Delight and similar varieties) fruit on canes that grew the previous year. These are called floricanes. After they finish cropping, usually by late July or early August, those canes will not fruit again. They die back naturally, but you should cut them out.

How to do it: Follow the fruited cane down to soil level and cut it cleanly with a pair of bypass secateurs like the Felco 2. The dead cane is easy to spot -- it will be brownish-grey, flaky, and often has dried fruit trusses still attached.

Remove every cane that has fruited. Leave the new green canes (primocanes) that grew this spring and summer. These will fruit next year. If the new canes are overcrowded, thin them to about 8-10 strong canes per metre of row.

Wear a pair of decent gardening gloves for this job. Raspberry stems are bristly and can irritate your skin, especially in warm weather when you're more likely to be in short sleeves.

Pruning Blackcurrants After Harvest

Blackcurrants fruit best on wood that is two or three years old. Older stems than that produce fewer, smaller berries and start to look tired and mossy. The trick with blackcurrants is to keep the bush constantly renewing itself by removing about a third of the oldest stems each year.

Right after you have picked the last currant, look at the base of the bush. Identify the three or four thickest, darkest stems -- these are the oldest. Cut them right to the ground using sturdy secateurs like the Felco 13 or a small pruning saw if they are really chunky. Leave the younger, paler-barked stems. Those are your future fruit producers.

If you are thinking about adding a blackcurrant bush to your garden, plant it in full sun or very light shade. Blackcurrants are surprisingly forgiving of damp British summers and will crop reliably with minimal fuss as long as you keep this annual pruning cycle going.

Pruning Gooseberries and Redcurrants

Gooseberries and redcurrants fruit on spurs on older wood, similar to how an apple tree fruits. They also produce fruit at the base of the previous year's growth. So the pruning approach is different from blackcurrants - you are shaping the bush rather than replacing it wholesale.

After harvest, cut back the current season's side shoots to about five leaves. This encourages the formation of fruiting spurs. Also remove any branches that are crossing or rubbing, and open up the centre of the bush so air can move through. This reduces the chance of mildew, which gooseberries are prone to in humid UK summers. A Hinnomaki Red gooseberry bush (check local nurseries for availability) is a reliable choice with good disease resistance if you are starting fresh.

Pruning Blackberries and Hybrid Berries

Blackberries and hybrid berries like tayberries follow the same pattern as summer raspberries -- fruit on last year's canes, cut those out after harvest. But blackberry canes are much more vigorous and thornier (unless you have a thornless variety like the Carbeth Plants Thornless Blackberry).

Cut the old canes that have fruited right to the ground. Select the strongest 4-6 new canes to tie into your support wires for next year. Remove any weak, thin, or damaged new canes. Blackberry canes can get 2-3 metres long, so it is important to train them onto wires or a trellis as they grow, rather than letting them become a tangled mess that is impossible to sort out later.

Essential Tools for the Job

You do not need a shed full of equipment, but having the right tool for each thickness of stem makes pruning faster and safer. Here is what you want for soft fruit pruning:

• Felco 2 Bypass Secateurs -- handles raspberry canes, blackcurrant stems, and most soft fruit pruning up to 2cm diameter. Bypass blades give a clean cut that heals faster than anvil-style. These are the standard choice for UK gardeners for good reason.
• Felco 13 Lever-Action Secateurs -- the geared mechanism gives extra cutting power for thicker, woodier stems like old blackcurrant branches or gooseberry wood. Worth having if you have more than a couple of bushes.
• Gardening Gloves -- raspberry and blackberry canes are surprisingly vicious. A breathable glove with some grip makes the job much more comfortable.
• Long-handled loppers (optional) -- if you have really thick, old blackcurrant wood that secateurs struggle with, a pair of loppers gives you the extra force to cut through cleanly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Pruning too late. If you leave old canes on through autumn, the plant puts energy into keeping them alive instead of building next year's wood. Get the pruners out as soon as the last berry is picked.

Cutting autumn-fruiting raspberries the same way. Autumn raspberries fruit on the current year's canes. Prune them in February, cutting everything to ground level. If you cut out the fruited canes in summer, you remove next month's crop. The article on growing chillies in the UK covers seasonal timing in more depth.

Not removing pruned material. Soft fruit canes, especially raspberry and blackberry, can carry diseases like cane spot and botrytis. Burn them or put them in your green waste bin. Do not compost them and do not leave them lying at the base of the plant.

Being too gentle with blackcurrants. New gardeners often hesitate to cut out a third of the bush. But blackcurrants are vigorous and need that hard pruning to stay productive. A bush that never gets its old wood removed will be full of weak, unproductive stems within a few years.

Feeding After Pruning

Once you have finished pruning, give your soft fruit plants a feed. They have just put a lot of energy into producing fruit and now need to build next year's canes. A general-purpose fertiliser or a top-dressing of well-rotted manure around the base works well. Water it in if the weather is dry. Mulching with garden compost or bark chips helps retain moisture and keeps the roots cool through the rest of summer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict

Post-harvest pruning is the single most important thing you can do for your soft fruit plants. It takes about fifteen minutes per bush or raspberry row and the payoff is a stronger, more productive plant next year. The timing is the key bit -- do it right after picking, not weeks later when you get around to it. Mark it on your calendar for next late July and make it part of your annual gardening rhythm.

If you are looking to expand your soft fruit collection, the Raspberry Cascade Delight is a heavy-cropping variety that responds well to this pruning regime, and the Ribes Blackcurrant Blanka will give you years of reliable harvests with the annual third-cut approach described above.

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Last reviewed: July 22, 2026 · Evidence-based content · Contains affiliate links