I have a really big red raspberry patch (summer bearing) I had planted from little sticks three years ago. They’re really thick and bushy. Could I cut them down and of course, will they come up next year? I live in the northeast. I’m asking because I when I try to research this question, I’m directed to the various cultivars in the berry capital of the universe, namely, the northWEST. Not sure it applies. Thx.
You can cut them back like we do every fall, but I don’t know about them returning if you cut them down entirely.
I’m in the northeast as well, and we just planted five bushes this year. Everything I read said that you have to wait until the end of the second year to get any fruit, but mine have been going mad. We’re getting a couple of quarts a week off of them. Anyway, I’m also interested to hear about how to care for them, especially with the winter coming up. My dad had some bushes when I was a kid, and as far as I know, never did anything to them. But that was long long ago, in a galaxy far far away.
The types I have bear fruit twice. The New canes that sprung up this year and fruited for the first time are kept. They will fruit again next summer. The second year canes that bore fruit this year for the second time will die altogether and get cut off at ground level.
I got rid of raspberry bushes when I moved in here. We dug them up the best we could but I still had to mow the new little ones down for a season before they got the message. They haven’t been back since.
There may be newer hybrids, but the traditional bushes had biennial canes. They grew during the first season, but didn’t fruit. During the second, they set fruit and then died. you are supposed to go out around new and cut down all the dead canes and save the live ones. It is a big bother and I don’t do it. I think my harvest suffers a lot from my not doing it.
My front yard is filled with raspberry bushes. Hundreds of the berries appear every year. But I don’t get to eat even one. The birds eat them all before they are ripe. How do you keep the birds away?
Here in the West-of-Northeast, I just cut a big tract of raspberries down to three feet tall. Like I read. In a book. About cutting and raspberries.
Yeah, you gotta take the old canes out. When establishing a raspberry patch, it’s usually a good idea to make sure you can get at the dead canes.
This thread is making me curious; raspberries are like a weed here. Are they more delicate other places?
You can buy bird netting in a garden center. I bought some, but my raspberry bushes (planted last year) failed to have any berries this year 
The birds were weird here. When berries first started appearing, we lost about half to birds, but fairly quickly, as they really started coming on, the birds just ignored them, and we haven’t lost any for a few months now.
I’m having problems with birds on my grapevine. From what I can tell, the birds are pulling out the seeds and spitting the fruit on the ground. The nerve!!!
They don’t do as well in places with hot summers, such as here in Texas. (Not sure what their requirements are for dormancy, but plants that need X amount of very cold temperatures also don’t tend to do well in Texas. There’s a reason there aren’t many apple growers in the Lone Star State.)
I can verify that blackberries, on the other hand, do quite well here. But for raspberries, ya gotta go for the heat-tolerant newer varieties.
Elfkin: is it possible the netting blocked pollinators like bees from getting at the blossoms?
Ah, that’s something I never think of for some reason (heat tolerance). 
I have two rows of raspberries. Any production shortfalls if you mow them every second year. Takes away the pain of thinning the rows of last years cains.
I have slacked off the past few years on cutting down the fruiting canes after harvest, and we’ve been having monster yields anyway.
A bonus from removing the 2d year canes is that it’s easier to reach and harvest the fruit without the clutter on non-producing/dead canes.
If you mow down the bushes, you won’t get any raspberries for two years. To get the best results you should cut out the dead canes early each spring.
I did that last spring with a long-neglected raspberry patch that consisted mostly of several years worth of dead canes and this year it went nuts producing new canes, so next year I expect a bumper crop.