This is part 3 of our 5-part pruning blog series.

Generally, most berry species only need to be pruned to remove dead or crossing branches, open the canopy to allow light in to ripen the fruit properly, and to increase air circulation (which can help minimize diseases). They also tend to benefit from a (roughly 1/3) prune when planted (dormant), as this helps to even out the root to shoot ratio and push energy into root production and vegetative growth rather than fruit. However, not all berries adhere to this, and some (like raspberries) can get a more extreme prune, so read on for full details!

Berry pruning can be done in late winter or early spring. This does increase the plants’ susceptibility to winter injury due to losing a little bit of dormancy in response to the pruning; for this reason, it is best to wait until after the threat of extremely cold temperatures has passed. Also recall the heading and thinning cuts outlined in our fruit tree pruning post – these cuts will also apply here and create the same growth responses for your berry bushes and vines.

There are key things it is worth knowing for certain berries & vines, and that’s what we’ll cover below. We will look at any relevant details for all seasons of pruning (dormant spring pruning and/or summer or fall pruning) for each berry/vine type. Remember that everyone prunes a bit differently, including professionals, so you can do (or experiment with) what works best for you!

We have a large variety of berry bushes and vines, so if you’re looking for the details on something in particular, feel free to use the ctrl-F function or scroll through quickly to catch the relevant section heading! 

Berry Bushes – Alphabetically by Species Common Name

Aronia Berries (aka Chokeberries)

Unlike many other berries, Aronia bushes fruit on old wood, thus you don’t want to remove too much! In late winter or in season after flowering, remove any dead or diseased branches and lightly shape your bush. Suckers like to develop around the base and to prevent spreading these can be removed as they appear.

Every few years it will be beneficial to rejuvenate your Aronia bush by thinning out a third of the older stems, and older bushes may also benefit from a more severe pruning down to just a few feet tall if you find they are not producing as expected.

You can check out our selection of Aronia berries here.  

Blackberries

Similar to raspberries, blackberries can be primocane or floricane types (see the Raspberries section below for more information).  All of our blackberry varieties are summer-bearing types. While the plants are dormant in spring, prune all but 4-6 primocanes out, and prune the remaining primocanes back to 60cm (2 feet) aboveground to encourage branching and a stronger cane to help it stay upright. After you have enjoyed your crop, prune out the ‘spent’ floricanes.

Check out our blackberry varieties here. 

Blueberries

Both highbush and lowbush blueberries can be pruned with the same general rules outlined in the intro; pruning to open their canopy and remove old, dead wood.  However, young blueberries require very little pruning during the first three years – you can remove tips of 1-year-old fruiting wood (to encourage vegetative growth during these first years) as well as any damaged or diseased branches and anything that is weak and spindly at the base of the plant. You can also simply remove fruitlets from your bush during the growing season for the first couple of years to allow fruiting wood to focus on vegetative growth. Overall, focus on encouraging vigorous, upright growth for the first three years.

However, after three years your older bushes will require annual pruning to produce nice big crops with nice large berries. At this point, you’ll want to promote fruit development on the strong 1-year wood with good exposure to sunlight. After pruning out old, dead wood and spindly twigs around the base, you can remove (cut off at ground-level) canes that are older than 5 years or larger than 5cm diameter (these will be low vigour and produce little new fruiting growth), keeping 12-16 canes per bush. Allow new shoots to grow up to replace older canes.

Our various blueberry varieties can be found here.

Currants

Currants fruit on younger wood between 1-3 years old, so when left un-pruned the harvests slowly become increasingly small and piddly. Dormant pruning in late winter will vastly improve fruit production. If you are feeling wild/lazy and aren’t in a serious production mode, you can be like us and prune out some heavily laden branches when it’s time to harvest - just bear in mind this can be hard on bushes if you remove a lot of material at this time. The benefit is realized when you can take your branch away and sit in the shade while you pick the berries off of it though!

Black currants: bear fruit mostly on 2-year old wood, with a small amount on 1-year old wood. 

Red currants: bear fruit on 2 & 3-year old wood, never on 1-year old wood.

1-year old wood is smooth, thin and light coloured, while 2 and 3-year old wood stands out as thicker, darker and more mottled in texture.  Pruning out the older growth will make room for the new, but be sure to leave growth that will fruit for whatever variety of currant you’re growing. Aim to open up the bush canopy for light and air as well as removing any dead wood or spindly growth. In general, currants are quite hardy and can handle the removal of as much as 1/3rd of the bush. Aim to leave 8-12 well-spaced young(ish) branches on a mature shrub.

You can find all our currant plants here. 

Elderberries

Elderberries are very forgiving and can thrive when left alone completely - wild elderberries are frequently found in bush land around our area here in Ontario! But, as usual for all berry bushes, they can produce bigger and better crops when pruned. Pruning can also keep the bushes more compact and make it easier for you to reach the harvest!

With young elderberry plants, little or no pruning is required. Once the bush is 2 or 3 years old you can begin annual dormant pruning, removing dead, broken and weak canes. 3-year old canes often sustain more winter injury and produce less fruit, and can be removed to encourage new growth.

You can find our elderberry plants here.

Goji Berries

Goji berries are really easy to care for, requiring just a light prune each spring. In the case of the Goji, you can actually wait until the buds begin to break so that you can see where dead or damaged/diseased material needs to be removed. Fruiting happens on the 1-year old wood and you can remove a few of the oldest stems each year to rejuvenate the plant.

If your Goji has gone rather wild, you can prune it back to fit your space – a well-established Goji will be more tolerant of a heavier pruning, although you may sacrifice some or all of your fruit crop as it re-establishes.

You can find our goji berry plants here.

Gooseberries

Gooseberries are typically grown as an open-centred bush, but can also be trained against a support (fan or cordon shape). For your standard bush shape, pruning is done in late winter. Cordons and fans are pruned in summer, along with spur pruning bushes (fewer, but larger fruits) if desired. Fruit forms on 1-year wood as well as on spurs (short shoots, similar to fruit tree spurs) on older wood.

For dormant bush pruning, the focus should be on removing overcrowded branches (helps reduce powdery mildew throughout the summer growing season). An established bush will have a leg (short stem) with eight to ten main branches. Prune out weak or poorly spaced (crowding) branches and remove branches that are older than three years to create space for younger, more vigorous branches.  

For more in-depth information about training gooseberries and spur-pruning in summer, this is a great resource. 

To see our gooseberry plant selection, visit here. 

Haskaps (aka Honeyberries)

Haskaps can be pruned while still dormant OR in late April after the plants have budded out. Waiting to prune until the plants have leafed out allows you to clearly see where winter damage or disease has occurred and prune out dead wood easily. 

Young haskaps should be left alone, beginning an annual dormant pruning schedule when the bush has reached 4 years of age. Follow the standard process for pruning berry bushes as outlined at the beginning of this blog post, with the caveat that haskaps should only have as much as 25% of the plant canopy removed in any given year. Renewal thinning should be done every year, with a more aggressive pruning every 3-4 years; removing branches to open up the canopy, especially in the center. Haskaps fruit on 1-year old wood, so you’ll also want to leave as much of that as possible.

To see our current haskap plant selection, visit here.

Lingonberries

Lingonberries are quite simple and can be pruned according to the general pruning recommendations at the beginning of this blog post.  Fruit is produced on younger wood (1-3 years) and you can prune out older branches to make room in the canopy for younger ones.

After harvest, lingonberry bushes should be very lightly pruned, just removing the spent fruit stems. Over-pruning during this post-harvest session can damage the plant.

Our lingonberry plants are available here.

Mulberries

Depending where you grow your mulberry tree or bush and how old and well-established it is, you will need to prune at your discretion given the following information.

First off, there is some debate on the correct method for mulberry pruning because mulberries are prone to bleeding, meaning that sap may leak for days to months after making a cut. For this reason, cuts over 5cm (2”) in diameter should be avoided when possible - they may not heal at all or will require more time to heal, which will leave your tree or bush susceptible to disease or fungus issues. If you do need to cut a larger branch, aim for the dormant season because sap will be moving less within the tree and most diseases aren’t as active during the winter months – that being said, keep in mind that you still want to avoid extreme low temperatures (-17 or colder) in this scenario.

Dormant pruning for mulberries should be done either a month after the tree/shrub has lost all its leaves (so that you can be sure it is completely dormant, but not yet too cold), or in early to mid-spring, prior to the buds turning green. Anecdotally, we’ve heard that the optimal healing temperature for mulberries is 10⁰C, so if you’re able to prune during the brief window where the plant is still dormant, but daytime temps are warming up, this may help increase healing speed.

If your tree/bush is young, it is advisable to prune at planting time to even out the root to shoot ratio, and then let it grow aside from removing any diseased or crossing branches per usual good orchard hygiene.

If your mulberry tree or bush is getting large and in need of a prune, you can absolutely do both dormant and summer pruning.

Also of note, mulberry sap can be irritating to the skin for some people.

You can find our collection of mulberry plants here. 

Raspberries

There are two types of raspberries: everbearing and summer-bearing, and there are also two types of canes: 

1. Primocanes, which are green and growing in the current year
2. Floricanes, which are brown and 2 years old

Everbearing varieties produce fruit on both primocanes and floricanes, while summer-bearing varieties produce fruit only on 2-year-old floricanes. This is something you must be aware of when you prune your raspberries and blackberries so that you prune each different variety correctly.

Everbearing Varieties:  There are 2 options you can choose from, depending what’s going on with your patch and preferences. 

1. Prune out floricanes after they have fruited in late summer/fall. If trellised, thin canes as with summer bearing or as desired.
2. Mow the whole patch down. This will give you one larger crop in the fall and can help reduce diseases.

Our everbearing varieties are: Anne, Heritage, and Ohio’s Treasure.

Summer Bearing Varieties: Prune out floricanes in the fall/after fruiting. If trellised, thin out remaining primocanes to 1 cane every 3-4 inches/as desired.

Our summer bearing varieties are: Grandma Odula, Nova, Jewel, Royalty, and Tulameen.

You can find all of our raspberry varieties here.

Saskatoon Berries (Serviceberries)

Saskatoon bushes fruit mainly on 1-year old wood and are biennial, fruiting more heavily every second year.  They should be pruned in late winter/early spring, in the same manner as outlined at the beginning of this post (take out dead, damaged or diseased branches, remove crossing branches, open the canopy) and will benefit from pruning out older branches in a similar manner to blueberries and haskaps. They can also be trained to be more of a small tree if desired.

You can find our saskatoon berry plant selection here.

Sea Buckthorn Berries (Sea Berries)

Sea buckthorn bushes should be dormant pruned in late winter, but not every year (note differences for male and female plants below). They can also be maintained with thinning cuts all year round if needed.  Reminder that these bushes (in particular among the berries) are quite thorny and you will want gloves and arm protection!

Female:  Prune every 2 years; cut back older wood to the ground/trunk, but leave young shoots as the 1-year wood is where fruit production will happen. If the branches are cut as part of harvest (this can make harvesting a lot easier, just freeze the whole branch and then remove the berries from it), you should remove less during your spring pruning. If you have 2 or more female plants, you can optimize your berry harvests by alternating which one(s) you prune each year.

Male:  These sea buckthorn varieties only need to be pruned every 3 to 4 years. You should leave lots of old wood untouched and only remove half of the shoots to ensure plenty of pollen will still be produced the next season.

You can find all of our sea buckthorn plant offerings here. 

Thimbleberries

While thimbleberries grow as canes like raspberries and blackberries, they produce the best on mature canes that are 2 or 3 years old, so be sure to retain these when you are maintaining your patch. Aside from that, you can prune out canes similarly to raspberries and blackberries for spacing and timing. If desired, you could flag canes in different colours to keep track of which canes should be most productive and which are too old and should be removed for easy dormant pruning.

You can find our thimbleberries here. 

Vines – Alphabetically by Species Common Name

Grape Vines

Grapes require a trellis, heavy pruning (as much as 80 to 90% of 1-year old wood sometimes) and routine care for optimal fruitfulness. A late, hard frost can damage buds so don’t rush, but also aim to complete this task while your plants are still dormant. It’s recommended to prune either in late fall before the first snow, or in late winter/early spring. If you’re pruning in late winter, prune your hardiest grape species first: Vitis labrusca species are hardiest, then hybrids, then V. vinifera.

If the following piques your interest, you can check out Brock University’s vine alert site to see what grape bud survival is looking like in a particular spring. However, this is specific to wine grapes and wine producing locations of Ontario and Quebec and, while interesting to check out, may require some weather comparisons before you can make any estimations about your own location.

TRAINING:  In particular, grapes should be trellised/espaliered and trained against a fence, sunny wall, or arbour depending on what kind of grape production and gardening you’re aiming for. Horizontal wires or supports can be used at intervals of anything from 30-50cm (12-20 inches) with the total height at 1.2 to 1.8m (4-6 feet), depending how high you want to reach for harvest.

PRUNING:  Grapes bear fruit only on their current year’s growth. This means that you’ll be pruning to remove much of the previous year’s growth, which can be a lot of the plant and can feel scary! However, think about this: if you allow the vine to go wild and produce say, 4 meters of vine one year, and then it does this again year over year, suddenly you have 12+ meters of vining, vegetative growth that the plant has to feed, maintain, and send nutrients through before they reach the new growth where it will bear fruit. Your crop will be poorly fed! 

So let’s get into it: Pruning your grapes will be geared towards correctly removing as much as 90% of the old wood each year to make room for new shoots which can bear good fruit. This will be a constant annual cycle of renewing the ‘arms’ (also called cordons in certain trellising methods) of your trellis and replacing them.

A note about pruning cuts for grapes:  If doing late fall pruning, there can be dieback from the cut drying out afterwards, so each cut should be at least 1cm away from any buds or from the central trunk of the grape vine. Flagging tape or clothespins can be of great assistance to help you mark what parts you want to keep as you prune.

1^st Year:  Establish the trunk and a strong root system. Prune your young vine back to 1 stem with 3-4 buds from the ground while dormant (you can do this at planting time if you’ve purchased a bareroot vine from us) and add a vertical stake to tie your grape onto as it grows and reaches towards your first layer of trellis. By the end of the first year, the trunk shoot should have reached (at least) the first trellis wire (typically ~30” from ground) and you may have additional shoots as well.

2^nd Year:  The following spring, prune back the trunk shoot to 2-3 buds above the first wire. Alternatively, some pruning methods suggest allowing the vine to reach the top trellis wire 4-6 feet high, and then train out the top arms, allowing fruiting vines to grow and hang downwards. Then each season, the fruiting wood is cut back to the top arms so that new fruiting growth can spring forth and you can have grape bunches growing from each level of your trellis on each side of the central trunk.  Regardless of which trellis level you decide to establish first, the buds below your pruning cut on your trunk vine will become your lateral vines.  Remove any shoots lower than your first trellis layer on the main trunk. In spring and summer, train your new lateral arms along the wire/trellis. Once you have established your laterals, you can prune them when they have reached the width of your trellis.

3^rd Year & Onward:  Fruiting shoots will grow off of last years’ vines, so just continue pruning your vines to maintain your structure. On vines you’d like to see new growth from, prune them back to 2 buds (making your cut between the 2^nd and 3^rd buds) to create new 1-year growth where you’d like it to be!

You can find all of our grape vines here.

Kiwi Vines - Arctic and Hardy

Your kiwi vines can be left to do their own thing, but they will often go rather wild, producing lots of vegetative growth and smaller fruit crops. They will produce much better fruit crops if they are pruned and trained.

TRAINING:  In particular, these vining kiwis produce the most fruit when trained like grapes; i.e. espaliered and trained against a sunny wall or fence. In this scenario, wires can be placed horizontally at intervals of approximately 40-50cm (16-20 inches) so that branches can be trained along them on each side.  Because these vines are quite vigourous and love climbing, they can also work beautifully when grown over an arbour, pergola, or similar structure - just keep in mind how you will access the vine and structure for pruning so that the vine doesn’t take over!

PRUNING:  Kiwis should be pruned at planting time and as they get established on their structure. During the first year you’ll be pruning/pinching back vines as you establish the structure, and then in future years your pruning can be done in winter and summer.

1^st Year:  At planting time in early spring, determine your kiwi’s best, strongest shoot and prune it back to 30cm (1 foot), making the cut just above a healthy bud. Prune off all of the weaker shoots, which will stimulate development of a strong main trunk. This trunk stem should then be trained onto your growing structure by tying it loosely to a stake that will support it as it grows new branches, which will vine onto your structure or horizontal wires as mentioned above. You can prune off the tips of your horizontal stems if they reach the width of your structure later in summer. Aim to keep your structural shoots spaced about 20-30cm (8-12in) apart, and do more summer pruning (or pinch back) and training of the vines as needed to create new structural shoots if your vine is being prolific in its first summer.

2^nd Year:  Flowers and fruit are produced on new shoots, which will sprout from the base of the previous season’s growth. In late winter or early spring, prune back the lateral shoots (coming off of the horizontal arms) to 3-4 buds or at a healthy bud where you want to stimulate new growth that may fruit (arctic kiwis usually begin fruiting 3-5 years after establishment and hardy kiwis between 2-3 years) or which can be trained into your desired shape.

From June onwards, summer pruning can help keep your vine in check, and where fruit has started to form, pinching the vine back to having only 4-5 leaves beyond the maturing fruit can help increase energy put into the developing fruit.  Non-fruiting laterals can also be pruned back as far as five leaves to allow sunlight onto fruit or to simply help keep the plant contained. New growth that you want to contain can be pinched to one leaf beyond the last spot cut/pinched. 

3^rd Year and Onwards:  Continue with pruning as per year 2, but also consider that you can prune back the oldest 1/3 of the lateral shoots to about 5cm (2”) from the horizontal arm to stimulate vigourous new growth. Hardy kiwis can typically be pruned back quite heavily, while Arctic kiwis are known to be slightly less vigourous and may need a lighter hand.

If you prefer a larger and more sprawling plant, you can also reduce the amount of spring and summer pruning you do to let more vegetative growth happen – the variegated Arctic kiwis in particular can provide very pretty ornamental foliage!

You can find all our kiwi vines here.

And with that, we’ve covered each type of berry bush and vine that we offer here at Silver Creek Nursery!

We don't currently have many photos to showcase berry pruning in action or vine trellising in action. We'll update this post in future with additional photos. If you have any awesome photos of your vines or berries that you'd be willing to share with us for use in educational materials, please connect with us via email!

This 5 part blog series began by focusing on young trees and is intended to help new and intermediate growers who are beginning their orchard journey. Posts will follow the following approximate topic list and timing below.

Post 1: Planning Your Most Important Spring Orchard Task 

Post 2: Spring Pruning: Fruit Trees 

Post 3: Pruning Berry Bushes & Vines (that’s this post!)

Post 4: Pruning An Old Apple Tree (mid/late March 2025)

Post 5: Summer Pruning (June or July 2025)