Of all the jobs in my berry patch, pruning loganberries is the one that worries new growers the most, and the one that turns out to be the simplest once the penny drops. Those long, whippy canes scramble everywhere, last year's growth tangles with this year's, and it all looks like an impossible knot. But there's a single rule that makes the whole thing mistake-proof, and I promise that by the end of this you'll be reaching for the secateurs with a smile rather than a frown.
Do loganberries fruit on old or new wood?
This is the bit that unlocks everything, so let's nail it first. Loganberries (botanically Rubus x loganobaccus, a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry) fruit on canes that grew the previous year. Gardeners call these second-year canes floricanes. The fresh canes a plant throws up this summer won't carry a single berry until next year.
So in any given season you've got two completely different sets of canes living side by side: the older ones that are busy fruiting now, and the brand-new ones quietly growing up to fruit next time round. Get those two groups clear in your head and pruning becomes a doddle. It's exactly the same logic as summer-fruiting raspberries and tayberries use, so if you grow those you already know the tune.
When should I prune loganberries?
The main prune happens straight after harvest, in late summer or early autumn, once the canes have finished giving you fruit. At that point those fruited canes have done their entire job for life. They will never berry again, so you cut them right down to ground level and clear them out.
Don't be tempted to leave them "just in case". Old fruited canes only sit there getting woody, congesting the plant and harbouring disease over winter. Out they come. Meanwhile, this year's new canes are the ones you keep, tidy up and tie in for next season's crop.
The single rule to remember: after fruiting, the canes that just gave you berries are spent. Cut them out. Keep the fresh new growth.
What's the trick to never pruning the wrong canes?
Here's my favourite bit, and honestly it's the thing I wish someone had told me years ago. Loganberries are trained along horizontal wires, typically set at around 60cm, 1m and 1.5m up a fence or post-and-wire run. The canes are long and pliable, often 2-3m, so they bend and tie easily.
The trick is to train all of this year's fruiting canes to one side and all the new canes to the other. As the fresh canes come up through the middle, you guide them left while the fruiting ones stay tied to the right (or vice versa). Come pruning time, you simply remove every cane on the "fruited" side and swap the new ones across to take their place. No squinting, no guessing which cane is which. You physically cannot cut the wrong ones, because they're on opposite sides. It makes the job genuinely foolproof.
The step-by-step
Pick a dry day after harvest, pop on a decent pair of gloves (worth saying that thorned varieties such as LY59 will draw blood, while thornless types like LY654 are far kinder on the hands), and grab clean, sharp secateurs. Here's the order I work in:
- Identify the fruited canes. If you've trained to one side as above, they're all on that side. Otherwise, they're the older, browner, woodier canes that carried this year's berries.
- Cut them out at the base. Take each fruited cane right down to ground level. Don't leave stubs; a clean cut close to the ground heals best and leaves nowhere for disease to lurk.
- Untie and remove them from the wires. Pull the cut canes out carefully so you don't snap the new growth you're keeping. Bin or burn them rather than composting, as a tidy patch is a healthy patch.
- Choose your keepers. Select the 6-8 strongest, healthiest new canes. These are the ones that will fruit next year.
- Thin out the rest. Cut any weak, spindly or surplus new canes down to ground level too. Overcrowding kills airflow and invites mildew, so be a little ruthless.
- Tie in the keepers. Spread your chosen canes along the wires and tie them in with soft string or ties, fanning them out evenly so light and air reach every one.
That's it. The plant goes into winter clean, open and set up perfectly for next year. If you want the fuller picture on feeding, spacing and harvesting alongside this, my complete loganberry guide covers the rest of the year.
What about a newly planted loganberry?
First-year plants are a special case and need almost no pruning. In the first season your young plant is simply establishing and sending up its initial canes, so leave those new canes alone. Just tie them in to the wires as they grow. There won't be any old fruited canes to remove yet, and there'll be little or no fruit that first year while the plant finds its feet. From the following summer onwards you fall into the normal after-harvest routine described above.
Common mistakes to avoid
The mistake I see most often is cutting out the wrong canes, snipping away this year's lush new growth and leaving the spent fruited ones behind. That's a year's crop gone in one snip, which is exactly why the two-sides training trick is worth adopting. Equally common is leaving every cane in place out of nervousness, which just gives you a congested, disease-prone thicket that fruits poorly. And do thin properly to those 6-8 canes; cramming in twice that many feels generous but only reduces airflow and berry size.
Get the principle right, train to two sides, and prune confidently after harvest, and your loganberries will reward you handsomely. It really is one of the most satisfying jobs in the patch once you trust yourself with it. Happy pruning.
Ash
Loganberry pruning calendar: month by month
Hands-on cutting only really happens in August and September, once you've picked the last berries — for the other ten months of the year your job is training and tying in, not reaching for the secateurs. The mistake I see even from gardeners who've read the "when to prune" advice is doing a tidy-up cut in winter or early spring because the plant looks messy. Don't. Loganberries fruit on second-year (floricane) wood, so anything you cut back before it's had its summer counts as next year's crop, gone.
| Month | What to do |
|---|---|
| January | Fully dormant. No cutting — just check last autumn's ties and wires haven't slipped or snapped in winter wind. |
| February | Still dormant. Last safe window if you didn't finish thinning after harvest — but stop the moment you see buds swelling. |
| March | New growth pushes from the crown. Leave it — this is next year's fruiting wood forming. No cuts. |
| April | Canes extending fast. Start loosely training new growth to one side of the wires, away from the fruiting canes on the other. |
| May | Fruiting canes flower. No cutting at all — just keep tying in new canes as they lengthen. |
| June | Berries swelling on fruiting canes. If new canes are sprawling past 2m and swamping the plant, pinch the soft tip out — that's tidying, not pruning. |
| July | Harvest starts (timing varies by season and region). Keep tying in new canes; still no cutting of fruiting wood until picking's done. |
| August | Main harvest for most UK gardens. As soon as a cane's finished cropping, cut it to the base — don't wait for the whole plant to finish. |
| September | Finish the post-harvest prune: every fruited cane out at ground level, new canes tied onto the wires where the old ones stood. |
| October | Optional light tidy — remove anything damaged or diseased, secure loose growth before autumn winds pick up. |
| November | Dormant. Nothing to cut — check ties and wire tension survived any storms. |
| December | Dormant. Good month to clean and oil your secateurs and loppers, and order replacement canes or wire if you need them. |
Loppers or secateurs? The right tool for loganberry canes
A decent pair of bypass secateurs handles the whole job on their own for most established plants — loganberry canes rarely get thicker than a pencil, so a blade with a 20-24mm cutting capacity goes through fruited wood cleanly in one go. I only pick up loppers for an overgrown or neglected plant where old growth has hardened at the crown, or when I need the extra reach to get into a congested thicket without leaning through the thorns to do it. Long-handled loppers earn their keep there even though they're overkill for a well-kept plant.
On gloves: I've mentioned thornless varieties like LY654 are kinder on the hands than thorned ones like LY59, but it's worth going further if you're growing a thorned variety — get gauntlet-style gloves that cover the forearm, not just the palm. Most of the scratches I get aren't from the cut itself, they're from leaning my forearm across a neighbouring cane while reaching in. And whatever you're cutting with, keep the blades clean and sharp. A crushed, ragged cut from a blunt blade heals slower and gives cane blight an easier way in — wipe blades with diluted disinfectant between plants if you've had any disease on site that year.
First-year vs established-plant pruning: what actually changes
A first-year loganberry gets no fruiting prune at all — the only job is guiding the two or three canes it sends up onto the wires. From year two onwards you're into the full annual rhythm: cut out everything that's fruited, swap it for the new canes on the wires, repeat every year.
In year one, the priority is root and crown establishment, not shape. If a few flowers appear, that's fine and not worth removing, but don't expect or chase a proper crop — the plant's energy is better spent building canes that reach the top wire (around 1.5-1.8m) and a strong crown to fruit from next year. Some growers pinch the tip out once a first-year cane hits the top wire, to encourage side branching lower down, but it's optional and I don't bother on a plant that's growing well unassisted.
By year three or four, established plants can throw up more canes than the trellis comfortably holds — this is where the 6-8 keeper canes guidance above really earns its place, because a crown left to its own devices gets congested fast. If a crown's turned into a genuinely diseased tangle rather than just crowded, hard renewal — cutting the whole plant to ground level over winter and sacrificing that year's crop — is a legitimate reset. It's a harder call than routine thinning, but a clean start often outperforms years of fighting an overcrowded, disease-prone crown.
