Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: woodentop on August 19, 2007, 16:06

Title: Raspberry blues
Post by: woodentop on August 19, 2007, 16:06

At the start of the season I dug a long trench and planted about 15 raspberry canes. I thought I would fill the trench with a good mix of multi purpose compost, leaf mould and as I had a bag of unused cat litter ( wood pulp pellets ) that as well. It is now obvious that this was not a good idea as everywhere I have used this mix it has stunted the growth to about a quarter of what the plants should be.

Now I was wondering whether to uproot the canes and replant properly and give them a chance to establish before winter or leave them until  they are dormant and have a go next year.

I would be grateful for any opinions

Title: Raspberry blues
Post by: WG. on August 19, 2007, 16:15

Assuming the leaf mould was well rotted, the wood pulp will be the main problem since it will have caused nitrogen robbery.

Normal practice would be to move when dormant but I don't have much experience with rasps.

Title: Raspberry blues
Post by: richyrich7 on August 19, 2007, 19:43

Like WG says think thats your problem.

 If it was me I would just leave them in place feed them well with a good balanced fertilizer like growmore hoe it in carefully as rasb's are shallow rooted, feed early spring with a good dressing of blood, fish and bone.

I would imagine by now the wood pellets will have mostly rotted away so moving will only set them back again IMHO

Title: Raspberry blues
Post by: muntjac on August 19, 2007, 22:53

im with rich here . give them a feed of growmore and also a feed of sulphate of ammonia to give them a bit of power to have growth to look at next year :wink:

Title: Raspberry blues
Post by: woodentop on August 20, 2007, 12:33

Thanks for the advice - it saves me some work too !