Raspberry / Strawberry advice please!

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi all, as some of you may know we've recently taken on our first allotment and have been busy clearing it of the standing weeds that have grown in the past 12 months that it has stood abandoned!

We've found (under the 8' of weeds) 4 Raspberry plants / bushes / canes (sorry dont know the proper terminology) that are quite straggly and seem to have sprouted where they will, and a large bed os strawberries (some early and some late) that are completely inundated with weeds.

Looking at the area that is being taken by these 2 types of fruit, and the amount of weeds that are also there we are thinking of moving them into a clean bed, one that we have de-weeded. I know we cant do this unitl they have finished fruiting and have become dormant, but need advice on how to transplant them both, whether we should prune the raspberry bushes (either before or after we move them), and advice on what spacing we should use when we plant them and lastly whether we could plant the raspberries into the center of an 8' bed, train them onto some canes / netting to support them) mulch underneath to suppress weeds and then plant the strawberries into the sides of this bed (thinking of 2 or 3 rows on either side) and mulch under the strawbs. Are these good ideas? Are there any pitfalls we should watch out for?

We are both novice gardeners, so any advice would be gratefully received!

[nick the grief]

Hi Mrs D,

Firstly you Raspberries.

if they are fruiting now it means they are Autumn fruiting ones & they fruit on new wood so if you move these in November you can cut them back to about 2ft from the ground this will give the crown of the plant a bit of protection from the worts of the weather over the winter, then you can cut them to the ground in about feb/mar. If they don't have fruit on they are summer fruiting & they fruit on the prevouse years wood so you have to decide if you want anything next year or not. What you need to do is to cut out all the old wood any way then you can either leave some of the "new" wood on to give you a crop next year or treat it the same as the late & for go the fruit for a year. You will probably do best to not crop them next year as they will be trying to establish themselves.

An alternative would be to try an get out as much of the weeds as you can (even on hands & knees if you have to ) & then give them a really good mulch of compost or muck if you can.

Either way you should have them tied in to a support system, either a single post & wire system or a double one. The double one will give you a higher yeild of fruit as you can get more canes in. but you'll nee to brace the post & get the wire as tense as you can.



Strawberries

Again you need to weed them out as much as you can & ideally you want to transplant the new runners as these will have a longer life. Unlike the Raspberries that will last for about 15 years before you need to replant, strawbs only last about 3 or 4 years. so Unless you can get the new runner I would just weed them as well as you can this coming year & then root the runners & prepare the new bed for them. I know that you want to go ahead & clear everwhere up but there is little value in moving the existing plants only to have to re-move them again because they aen't productive anymore.

Hope this helps

[Mrs Dobby]

Thanks Nick, you are a star!!

Theres 4 raspberry plants, 2 which are fruiting now and two that arent, so it looks like we have 2 of each! Once they start hibernating we are gonna get them moved and plan on building 2 A frames from 2"x8' branches we've had drying for a while, then string the wiring accross these, so they should be fairly well supported!

There's quite a few runners on the strawbs, so think I'll pot these up and move them to the new bed once we've gotten it cleared! The bed they are currently in is sparsely populated and is taking too much room, so its gonna have to be moved at some time!

[nick the grief]

What you could do is put some membrane down & plant them thru the membrane, that way you won't have to keep weeding them.

[Mrs Dobby]

Great minds think alike!!! We were thinking of some weed mebrane and mulching or just a good 4" mulch, any suggestions as to whats best to use? The bark chippings on the plot are a mix of horse chesnut and conifer, and I'm not sure if they would alter the soil ph if I used them above the strawbs and rasps?

[bramble]

Put the membrane and then put the bark chippings on top. that way they won't interfere with the soil at all.

[Mrs Dobby]

Thanks Bramble, think thats the way we'll go!

Thanks everyone for the great advice, hints, tips and ideas, they are all really appreciated!