The pruning of the red varieties consists in pinching back the shoots during the first season, allowing only about five canes to grow in each stool in after years, avoiding the pinching of shoots unless the soil is very strong and the growth rampant, and cutting out the old canes as soon as they have fruited. The pruning of the blackcaps consists in pinching off the tips each year as soon as they have reached a height of about 20 inches. This tends to make the canes stocky and self-supporting. Spring pruning consists in shortening in the branches to about 18 inches and removing pruny and ex cess shoots. This latter amounts to thinning and should be carefully done.
For market the fruit should never be picked until after the dew has dried and should be shipped to market in small packages. Red raspberries are usually marketed in pint baskets. Black raspberries, especially for canning, are often gathered by jarring the ripe fruits into aprons with boxes attached, the fruit being passed through a fanning mill to blow away the leaves, etc. Generally, however, the picking is done by hand with red raspberries and with both kinds for the best markets.
Among the numerous insects which feed upon the raspberry are two species of cane boring beetles, Agrilus ruficollis and Oberea bimaculata; wilting of the canes is usually the first indication of their presence, cutting and burning the injured ones is the only remedy recommended. The striped tree-cricket (CEcan
thus nigricornis) often lays its eggs in the stems, but is considered to he a beneficial in sect otherwise, since its food consists largely of plant-lice. Several caterpillars and other foliage-chewing insects, such as the raspberry saw-fly (MonoPhadnus rubi), occasionally prove troublesome, and some of the stink-bugs re veal their presence by their disagreeable flavor when inadvertently eaten. General remedies have been recommended for these insects. (See lauscrtons). •Seireral • so-called plimt diseases have been reported upon the raspberry. The orange rust has never been successfully com bated. It attacki weak plants. Digging out and burning the plants attacked by it is the only remedy. It should be done as soon as the disease is discovered in May. Anthracnose has been held in check by spraying, Bordeaux tnixttire.: See Futroicise.• Consult Bailey, 'Standard Cyclopedia Hord culure) (New York 1914-17) ; Card, (Bush Fruits) (New York, 2d ed., 1917) ;• books on insects listed under IqseCTICLDE, and numerous bulletins of Agricultural Experiment Stations and of the United States Department of Agri culture.