Raspberries not flowering yet

Supercell

My raspberries, whilst looking very healthy and vigorous haven't flowered at all yet, they are autumn fruiting. I recall in previous years the bees going mad for the flowers so would have thought they would be out by now.

Too early for flowering yet?, a quick google gives a lot of information about when to expect the raspberries but nothing so far about when they flower.

Day Lewin

Autumn fruiting raspberries would be well flowering by now. Most of them fruit in August, and continue to October.

Are you sure that they are second-year canes? Raspberries are sort of biennial; the fruited canes from last year should have been cut off and their younger siblings, growing alongside, cherished since last year to fruit this year.

Or you may not have enough bees to pollinate them and the poor flowers all just fell off instead of maturing into fruit.

Supercell

Hmm all were cut to the ground as in previous years, weird, never had biennial issue before, will leave enough alone this autumn regardless so.
I wonder if I gave them too much ash from the fire last winter (all wood ash), growth is incredibly vigorous and I wonder if thats the cause?

Day Lewin

Ah. You may have chopped down the "young ones" that would have fruited this year.

Normally, one can tell the "finished" ones because the stems go brown (Cut those down) while the new cane is greener and softer looking: leave those for next year.
I too have a massive jungle of raspberries this year but they are fruiting - I've never seen so many - we are drowning in raspberries.
And the young ones are coming up in my lawn, rockery, everywhere...gone feral!

They love potash, and I always throw ash from the barbecue around them. I suppose there may be an upper limit for wood-ash...don't actually know! But they ARE so vigorous that I think I may cut their height down to about 5 ft, this autumn - the ones I'm keeping.