Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Jackypam on February 16, 2017, 17:33
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For the past 2/3 years I have been pretending that this isnt happening. I have a big fruit cage with one long thin bed for raspberries and 3 squarish ones, 2 for the blueberries and currents, and one for strawberries. All nice and permanent. However for the last couple of years the raspberry canes have been getting weaker and the harvest dreadful with the canes turning brown mid season and basically dying. I have tried replacing but they go the same way. Help! I could perhaps swap the raspberries with the strawberries, bit of an odd shape, but I could. But will it be far enough away not to be infected with whatever it is? There is only a paving slabs between the beds. Advise please
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If it's only the raspberries struggling, it suggests to me they might be suffering from one or more virus diseases - I've certainly lost some over the years, although it always seems to be the plants which get the worst of the light where they're planted which suffer the most.
I'm no expert on how persistent or easily spread these viruses can be, but I'd be tempted to try a different variety in as 'clean' a space as you can find, and give the plants as much TLC you can to improve their chances.
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Are they summer or autumn rasps?
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You could dig out the soil & replace with some from further away
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Is your soil well-draining? If not, did you plant them too deep as they are quite shallow-rooting.
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I had an issue a couple of years back. I planted some summer rasps in a well prepared bed....they seemed ok but then went brown and died off. I tried again the following year with rasps from a more reputable supplier and they did the same thing, so I'm guessing it's a soil thing.
The bed next to it had autumn rasps in and they were fine.
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One half of the bed is summer, the other is autumn. The ground is quite waterlogged in winter although the top few inches are ok. The bed is slightly raised. The soul is much compost added to clay. Raspberries were planted about five years ago and were ok but not really thriving for the first few years. Recent additions have started to fail straight away. All were planted near surface. So if I dig out the top couple of inches and replace with fresh, then plant some new ones, do I have a chance? I could raise the bed a couple of inches more?
Thanks for replies so far btw.