[FarmerShawn]

[QUOTE=barkeater;338188]My berries start ripening in early July. I didn't know pruning is usually done in the early fall. I've always done my pruning about this time of year while the plants are dormant, just as the last of the snow is melting. It is much easier to pick out the old dead canes which have turned white after the winter, and see the weakest new canes to prune out.

Well, early fall is when the experts and commercial growers say to do it. Actually, if I do it at all (and some years I don't) I usually make it a spring chore. And yes, I agree, July is the more likely season for them to ripen.
I do have a small patch of fall bearing plants, and the recommendation for them is to mow them right down in late fall or early spring. I don't do that either, I'm afraid. This far north, it is chancy whether they will have time to produce or not. Even despite my neglect, I usually get a few berries just before hard freezes shut them down. But they do not have the juicy, sweet, rich raspberry flavor of the Lathams. The fall bearing ones I have also do not seem inclined to spread as readily as the Lathams. I started my Latham patch with about a dozen plants, and each year almost doubled it in size just by transplanting the ones that come up in the path and letting the ends expand at will, until it got to the size I wanted. But the fall bearers I have don't seem to send up much in the way of side shoots - they are not nearly as invasive, I guess, so the patch has remained small.
In recent years, without the mulch keeping things clean in the Latham patch, I have lots of course grass growing up in the patch, as well as an infestation of some kind of viney bindweed I hate, and cane borers are a perennial problem. There is also a blight that will hit if I get a wet summer which will cause the canes to die just after blossoming the next year. But in a dry summer - no problem! So I still get occasional berries with my benign neglect, and they are tasty!
Shawn