Raspberries, strawberries, loganberries...

So when we came here three years ago I planted some strawberry plants I brought with me - about five or six - in an enclosed bed around 2m by 3m... over the next couple of summers they did extraordinarily well... colonised the whole area... so, believing I was some sort of soft fruit guru, I purchased three raspberry canes and one loganberry cane and planted them at the far end of my little strawberry patch... The raspberries have gone crazy and the loganberry stems are several metres long! Do I cut everything down to ground level when fruiting is over? Should I train these things? Can I train these things? I am thinking of lifting a lot of the strawberries and putting them in hanging baskets or something - would that work? :D

 

Discipline, young man! Keep the strawberries in rows so it's easier to pick the fruit. Transplant rooted runners either into pots or into a fresh bed to start again when the old plants are exhausted.
Posts either end of row /wires at 12"intervals for the raspberries and loganberry and tie or twine stems onto wires. If they're not specifically late summer fruiting raspberries just cut out the stems that have borne fruit and tie in the newer, lighter coloured ones for next year. Not sure about loganberries but think it's the same for loganberry. Cut out fruited stems and tie in a couple of vigorous new ones for next year.
All this is purely theoretical of course....you should see my shambles

 

With Loganberries at the moment you'll have last year's growth that will be fruiting, plus this year's new stems that will need (temporarily) tying back to supports. When the old canes have finished fruiting I cut them down to the ground then relocate the new stems into their permanent positions on the structure.

Increase your stock by burying tips of new canes until they have rooted, then cut off and tie back the cane above.

 

I was thinking about a photograph... but that would be too embarrassing... the raspberries were three canes the same... now some are fruiting now, and some will fruit right up to November... if I had bought three rabbits there wouldn't be so many of them now as there are raspberry canes! As previously noted, the loganberries take after their blackberry parentage when multiplying by leaning over and rooting where they touch. This is not helped by the proximity of next door's extremely healthy blackberry crop which invades my patch which is leading to a very strange ménage à trois but some lovely big tasty raspberries in one particular corner lol... I'm not sure I can do anything with it right now that doesn't involve a machete and a pith helmet - will it be okay till autumn...?

 

The main purpose of tying the new canes back now is to get them out of the way when picking, avoiding treading on them and preventing them from rooting in the ground, but some years I haven't got around to doing it until later without any problems, if you accidentally damage a cane they can normally be sorted out by splinting them ASAP.