It's taken a long while to get to this point

Last year I tackled one of our autumn raspberry beds, (I posted about it here), which was planted up with Joan J raspberries. It was infested with bindweed. The raspberries were dug up, the roots tidied and as much of the bindweed root as possible removed. The canes only produced a handful, (well less than that), of fruit. We were prepared for this as it was a case of kill or cure. Most replanted roots are growing well this year so maybe they will produce more fruit. I just need to be vigilant and remove any bindweed that tries to reassert itself.

Joan J raspberries this year

My plan this year was to tackle the other autumn raspberry bed - the home of All Gold. This time the plants were infested by couch grass and to be honest the tidying up was a few years overdue.

I decided that the only way the tidying was ever going to be done was bit by bit whenever I could spare the time in between other more urgent jobs. I tried to make a start in March but the ground was just too muddy. As with most of our allotment beds the window between the ground being too wet and too dry is fairly short lived especially when dealing with a bed that is well compacted and riddled with couch grass roots.

I managed to make a start at the beginning of April when the ground was just about dry enough to work with. The bed was planted up at least ten years ago during which time couch grass roots had woven their way in between the old gnarled raspberry roots. The only way to make a half decent job of tidying the bed was to dig up the raspberries and sort out some fresh, young pieces to replant freed from the shackles of couch grass. Being autumn fruiting raspberries, last year's canes were cut to the ground after replanting the pieces of root.

As you can see from the photos above by the time I was near completion the ground was hard and dry. I had to resort to crumbling clods of earth in a way that can only be compared to the rubbing in method used when making pastry.

The tidying up took a whole month to complete with snatches of time stolen as they became available. Finally the bed is tidy and replanted.

The plants have been treated to a dose of fish, blood and bone so now it is a case of seeing how many of the plants survive. At the moment the first roots to be replanted are sending up strong new shoots.

I don't expect to be picking many raspberries from this bed this year and I'm sure that there are still pieces of couch grass roots waiting to spring into life but I hope when they do I'll be ready for them.

Another raspberry that I don't expect to produce fruit this year is our newly planted black raspberry - Black Jewel We can't wait to see what the fruit is like but I guess that we will have to.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett