What is wrong with my raspberries???

The raspberry plants were planted in Feb. 2005. I have fertilized them 3 times this year so far, they are mulched with mint compost, and have put coffee grounds in the area. The soil is good made up of chicken manure, horse manure, fur bark, and sandy loam. The spot can be wet in the winter but not waterlogged at all.
Unfortunately, I have June and fall bearing in the same spot so they will get moved this fall to their own separate spots.

Now for my problem,

As you can see in the picture, the leaves are yellow with a brown/rust tinge on the edge.
More pictures following will show more on what is going on.

Please help me figure out what is wrong. Have gone to 2 nurseries with samples and nobody can help me so far. They don't seem to think it is that nasty virus. So what do you all think???

Here is another shot of the yellow leaves. Note the dried up brown leaves too.

More of the full area.

The last picture was one side and this one is the other side.
The last picture doesn't have the new growth but this picture does.
The new growth is very healthy, fairly dark green and happy.

So what is going on with the older growth then???

Help me please!
Carol

Sure hope someone comes along to solve your problem with the raspberries. I have 3 varieties of raspberries all planted side by side in one area. they have been there too long , hope to move to different area this fall. The foliage on mine is okay but the berries themselves are smaller than they should be. My climate is much drier than yours. I irrigate at least 7 months of the year. Good Luck

Donna

Daisy, are the canes affected the ones you have been picking from for a while? I'm certainly no expert but canes that are finished fruiting are finished and can be cut off. I just *wish* my berries looked as nice as yours. I grow the everbearer Heritage but Kansas just isn't raspberry country. Your new growth looks nice and I have a feeling with such good looking raspberries I can still see in the pics that you don't have anything too much wrong.

Guess I forgot to tell about the actual berries. Some of them are normal size and good. But then others of them are tiny, swiveled up, and some vines aren't happy.
Yes, Vashur, the bad canes are the ones that have been producing berries. Those canes started out looking and acting fine. But then started to do what I said above. I realize that after they are done, they don't look too good. But as they started to form fruit, the canes started to act funny.
Carol

Hopefully, someone will come read this who knows more. :) Mine got hit by a hailstorm which did a job on the new leaves this spring. I got a few decent looking raspberries but the rest also dried up. It got really hot here while they were setting on so I figured that was the main of the problem. Two of the plants were cut back to the ground this spring and have all new canes for fall bearing. These are the Heritage variety which are both spring and fall. I hope I can get a few on them this fall.

All the reading I've done claims you don't need to fertilize them heavily. I used a long lasting 10 10 10 on mine late last summer but they haven't had any other fertilizer. They were planted in the spring of 2004 and the ground is fairly fertile and shaded from the late afternoon sun.

My bearing canes of Fall Gold yellow and Caroline red raspberries are more yellow than the new canes. To most extents this is normal. They have been healthy, but are maturing out now. Too much water can yellow leaves too.

I don't know how similar they are to blackberries but we've had a very heavy crop of thornless blackberries this year. The bed has a high percentage of compost and the plants were about 2-3ft. high in the spring of 2005. We have only 6 plants and drove 3 fruit tree spikes around the base of each about 8-10 inches away from the canes. I'll post a few of the berries we picked this weekend. I put the penny, quarter and dime there for a comparison of size. New plants are coming up all around the old ones that are bearing now. Some of the new ones are 12ft. tall - really too tall.
Louise

There are several types of raspberry diseases that might look like you describe. Try googling on "red raspberry rust" or "raspberry rust" to see if anything fits. You might try a test spraying with an anti-fungal suitable for raspberries to see if it helps.

Thanks guys for your comments. I had another nursery call me after I left a sample of my plant there and they said it was just normal due to hot weather. So am still not convinced that is the reason but....
Carol

What about a virus causing the wilt? I phoned Nourse. They are very careful to grow and sell virus-free plants. But they said that if my neighbor's raspberries have a virus, or if some wild raspberries growing nearby have virus, then aphids can spread the virus to my raspberries. Seems there is nothing I can do about that except to dig out the infected plants and burn them.

The nursery that I took the sample to, said no virus. That is what I was worried about. All the new shoots are healthy as a horse, so that is what is interesting about it all.
I pulled up some of the new shoots that were in the wrong place and am growing them in a pot for another new raspberries bed. I just want to make sure they don't have any virus or disease before I start this new bed.
Thanks, CarolJeanie, for calling them. That is interesting about the aphids spreading the disease. Make sense tho.
I don't do good on the phone since I am hard of hearing so that is why I am asking either in person or here online.
Carol