Fruit bushes on the move

For some time now I have come to realise that the bed in which I had originally planted my raspberries wasn't really fit for purpose.

Overgrown raspberries and blackberries

The bed is 2'6" wide, which in itself is OK, but it backs directly onto another bed which contains strawberries and is also 2' wide. The net result of this is that I found it impossible to reach half the fruit at the back of the bed. I have never had much fruit from the seven raspberries I planted back in 2012 anyway, so I decided that I would move them into a couple of much thinner beds between the polytunnel and the veg beds that can be accessed from both sides which I hope will help me look after them better.

It rained quite a bit through the afternoon on Monday, but it had brightened up considerably after work so I decided to spend the last hour of daylight down at the plot and get started on moving the fruit.

Last winter I had been given a grape vine but hadn't really done anything with it, just propped it up still in it's pot and basically left it to fend for itself apart from watering when it got too dry. As a result of this cavalier attitude the tiny grapes that formed over the summer didn't do much, so I decided to move this first, and put it in the middle of one of the 12' long, 20" wide beds that I have earmarked for fruit.

New Grape and Raspberry bed

The plan is that the supporting wires I will put up for the grape can be used by the raspberries that I will plant on either side of the main stem. The few weeds that had colonised this bed since I made it last September came out easily with the exception of one dock that had massive roots . I managed to cut these off about six inches below the surface, but I will have to keep an eye out for it resurfacing in the future. From past experience I know that these can be a nuisance.

The grape vine had already been trained into two main branches so I trimmed it back to a foot or so above the split and planted it in the center of the bed. I planted it slightly higher in the bed than it had been in the pot as I am intending on filling the bed up slightly when I plant the raspberries.

Now the grape was out of the way I got on with the task of cutting back the raspberries. Raspberries come in two main varieties which are either summer or autumn fruiting. Summer fruiting ones should be cut back to the ground straight after harvest but the autumn ones are merely trimmed to about 2 foot high.

As I didn't really know which varieties I had I decided to cut them all back to their base which would then make digging them out and replanting much easier. Having never been pruned back before, the whole bed was a veritable thicket, and as I also soon discovered, they weren't all raspberries!

 I had originally bought three bare-rooted raspberries from Aldi, and three bare rooted redcurrants which I thought had actually turned out to be raspberries as well but it now looks like these three and possibly one or two of the others were actually blackberries!

 As I delved further into the bed the stems at the base were nearly an inch thick, and absolutely covered in wicked thorns which went straight through my gloves. I changed into my heavy duty rigger gloves to deal with these, but even then I still got pricked a few times.

Spiky Blackberries

 I don't particularly want blackberries on my plot as they tend to take over a bit, which partly explains why this bed had become so unmanageable, so I have asked if I can replant these in the waste area against the border fence adjacent to my plot. The corner nearest to me has been used in the past by kids getting onto the allotment and I had already arranged that I could dump the spiky raspberry and brambles there as a deterrent which should make them think twice about climbing over, and if these brambles take root and thrive we will have a good blackberry harvest in a couple of years.

With the light failing I didn't manage to get too far with clearing the bed, but at least I have started. I hope to get back there on Friday to finish off, or at least get a good portion of it done at least.