[mikegm]

I visited my newly acquired allotment this morning and cut down the Autumn Raspberry canes. Firstly how should I dispose of the canes & secondly should I now give the area a dig & apply some compost or general fertiliser?
Am I correct in saying Autumn Raspberries do not require posts & wires,as at moment these are in situ. Thanks

[crh75]

1.  If you are alowed to, burn the canes, otherwise chop up small and compost.
2.  If it is not too wet lightly dig over.  I would wait until early spring to feed and then mulch with compost or well rotted manure.
3.  In theory they do not need posts and wires. However, I find they flop all over the place so roughly sting them up by having a post at each end (my row is only about 2.5m) and of the row and wrapping some string around a few times.   I only do this in the summer when they are starting to flop over.

[Puenktchen]

You have to be really careful if you want to dig the area around the raspberries as they tend to have the roots quite close to the surface and are easily damaged with a spade. I don`t dig the bed my autumn raspberries are in at all. I just cut all the canes down in January and apply a mulch (compost and leaves). In spring I apply some chicken manure and that is all I do apart from watering in really dry spells.

If the area the raspberries are in is full of weeds I would dig the raspberry plants out and replant them in a new bed where you have already removed all weeds and applied compost/manure. This is what I did when I took my allotment on and the raspberries are thriving now.