Pruning Raspberrys Help Please

Hi, this is my first post here as I have a question. I'm relatively new to gardening as I only moved to a house with a garden to speak of last year and only managed to do a few things while looking after new baby. I am very keen and did manage to erect and fill a 6x12foot fruit cage with several fruits in it.

My question concerns my Raspberrys. I have two plants, both of which I thought were autumn fruiting as the fruit was quite late (September) and was planning to cut the canes to the ground this month. However I went out yesterday to do it and saw that there were some canes that did indeed look dead (old) and some others that has what looked like buds on. The rest of the fruit canes (Blueberry, Blackcurrant, Jostaberry) have similar buds which I assume is where the fruit will grow this year.

Should I leave these canes in place? Does that mean that my bushes are summer fruiting? I assume I can cut what looks like dead wood out, I just want to make sure that I don't cut what will fruit this year. Also does anyone have any tips on how to control the shape of the canes that are there (assuming I don't have to cut them down).

Thanks

You are right.  Autumn raspberreis should be cut down now to make them produce fresh new vigorous canes which will fruit later on.  The plant will naturally send sap up old stems that have not been killed by the frosts and these will produce buds followed by foliage and fruits but they won't carry as much fruit as new stems.

Cut the raspberries down to about 9" high and give all the plants a good feed to encourage strong growth.

obelixx - If my stems already have buds on them should I cut them? I'm not sure if the buds are new or whether they have been there a while, with the snow I've not been to look that regularly. I'm concerned that I'll cut now and get nothing at all in either summer or autumn.

Cut them.  You could hedge your bets by cutting back to just above the lowest buds but I would wait now till thie next cold spell and snow have passed.

Cut them back to about 8 inches above the ground.  When the weather warms up new shoots will grow up from below ground; these are the branches that will give you your fruit this year. 

I've just planted some new autumn fruiting raspberry canes - I'm so looking forward to the fruit.