Couch grass in raspberries...

I'm sure we've covered this somewhere before, but as it's a perennial question, here it is again...

We planted two rows of 'Joan J' and 'Glen Ample' three years ago, and as we garden from grass paths either side, the couch has got well into the roots.

I'm sure I heard years ago, that during the dormant season, it doesn't hurt the hardened rasp canes to squirt some glyphosate around the base of each plant to kill off the couch.

Rasps have such shallow roots, that conventional weeding probably hurts the plant more than the couch, so the quandary remains...

Any views anyone?

I thought I'd mention a point raised on that earlier thread

Quote from: Kristen on September 28, 2013, 08:01

Quote from: Growster... on September 28, 2013, 07:34

Glyphosate will not be absorbed through brown/lignified/woody stumps. 

Interested in that bit as folk put Glyphosate on treestumps to stop them sprouting.  Perhaps such (i.e. "still active") treestumps would now be described as "brown/lignified/woody" though?

I sprayed couch grass growing beneath an old rose, this winter, it seemed the only way to deal with  it as it was tangled through the rose roots. I normally spray into a bottomless bottle to contain the spray direction, but for some reason didn't think it was necessary near the woody rose branches.
The result: only a few small twisted/deformed leaves have grown this spring - I've managed to kill the rose as well as the couch   
Roses and raspberries are in the same plant family so be warned.

I inherited a small bed of autumn raspberries on my new plot which a neighbour said produced very good berries. It was absolutely choked with couch - and raspberry runners had popped up all over the place. Like a lot of others talking about this issue, I bit the bullet, dug everything up, soaked the roots in water for a bit and stripped out the weeds. Then dug deep, added compost (my predecessor left a good full bin) and replanted everything. I lost one sucker but everything else is coming along - a bit slower than the rest of the plot, but that's to be expected. I didn't do it until late March. (see before and after pics below)

We've had this problem on the community allotment, along with the desire not to use chemical weedkillers. This year I covered the fruit beds with decent weed suppressant, cutting slots to fit it around raspberries and bushes. It seems to be largely working, there are a few tufts of couch coming up where the slots are but nothing major. I have in the past dug up bushes in the dormant season and dug out as much of the couch as I could. Wrong time of year to do this now I think.

Perhaps you could spray the just ends of the row and see what happens?
This could stop the couch from growing into the raspberries and the raspberries from growing into the grass path.

I'll be doing that, Azubah - there is a 'hard shoulder' between the bed and the path, but the rasps themselves have got themselves all knotted up now!

Having noticed over the years that the new Autumn raspberry shoots often out perform the parent "crowns", I occasionally take to a problem area in Winter and hoik the roots out of the ground and give them a good clean up and a haircut. Then dig over before I put them back, or not. A sort of rigorous underground pruning in a sense.  Fortunately, raspberries are like weeds on my plot. I love them and they go in everything from June to December
I have given up on grass paths around beds as the couch smiles while it's plotting and setting sail out of sight.