Rasberry Canes

selyts

I have just been luck enough to get an allotment. It has quite a few rasberry canes on it but they look like they have been neglected for some time. I don't know what type they are but I would like to move them to another spot so that I can clear the area they are currently on. What should I, or can I, do with them?

Linda32

Hi,

I think you will have an almost impossible job on in trying to move them.

Maybe someone will be along in due course who has moved them, but I wouldn't like to try.

Is it at all possible to work around them?

mysk_girl

Raspberries reproduce by sending out suckers underground. So if you wait until you can see new baby canes poking out of the ground, these can easily be moved. I usually do it when they are about 4" tall. Raspberries fruit onto old wood so you may not get any fruit of the transplanted ones in the first year, but then each year you will get new baby canes and fruit off the previous years babies. Hope that makes sense! Then to prune you cut back the canes that have fruited to the ground once they stop giving fruit.

selyts

Thanks for the information. With the amount of growth around them I'll be lucky to see any new growth but I will try and clear the ground around them, cut them down to ground level in November, and hope that they come back healthier than they currently look.

_gav_

it depends on which type of Raspberry you have, are they Summer or Autumn fruiting? Summer fruiting will provide fruit on last years canes, so you don't want to cut them back! You only want to cut back those canes that have borne fruit this summer.

Where as Autumn fruiting, which are still fruiting in my garden, are cut back when they have finished fruiting.

The trick is to work out what type you have. If they are still providing fruit, then I would suggest they are likely to be Autumn fruiting.

annie123

selyts wrote: »

I have just been luck enough to get an allotment. It has quite a few rasberry canes on it but they look like they have been neglected for some time. I don't know what type they are but I would like to move them to another spot so that I can clear the area they are currently on. What should I, or can I, do with them?

The other plot owners near you may know what type they are, worth asking.
Yes you can move raspberries providing they are dormant ( well you can do it other times but best to stick to dormant if you're new to growing them), so now onwards really unless they still have fruit on them planting at the same depth.

You need to get on your hands and knees and look low down, are there spindly ones? cut them out first, any with brown stems have already fruited so cut them down too. New canes with no signs of having fruited may still have a tinge of green on them in which case they will fruit next year.
If you want to put them in a different permanent spot somewhere else, prepare it first then dig up and move them.
I'll be thinning mine this weekend if it's dry and digging some up and posting them to friends. They will be fine doing that so will be fine whatever you do with yours.

If you do chop them all down and they're summer fruiting you won't get any fruit till 2014 so I'd keep some long canes too

[Deleted User]

selyts wrote: »

I have just been luck enough to get an allotment. It has quite a few rasberry canes on it but they look like they have been neglected for some time. I don't know what type they are but I would like to move them to another spot so that I can clear the area they are currently on. What should I, or can I, do with them?

Congratulations on your allotment !

Personally, I would leave them for now - they may look very sorry for themselves at this time of the year, but they could provide you with kilos of soft fruit next year (saving you £££s). As you don't know whether they're Summer or Autumn fruiting, I would suggest treating half of them as Summer and half as Autumn, so, basically, just hard prune half of them - cutting them down to the ground (treating them as Autumn) and on the other half, just cut out the brown/dead stems, then see what happens when they start to grow and bud. You'll then be able to tell.

When we planted raspberries they took a good 3 years to really get their roots deep enough to give a good crop so I would urge you not to rip them out too hastily.

annie123

Corona wrote: »

When we planted raspberries they took a good 3 years to really get their roots deep enough to give a good crop so I would urge you not to rip them out too hastily.

Raspberries are shallow rooting, could have been a lack of water maybe was your problem?

Moving raspberries has been asked on here many times before an example below:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2767946

OP if you google moving raspberries you will find all sorts of post on how and when to do it.

tanith

I'm still picking my Autumn fruiting raspberries so it should be easy to tell, if they are still fruiting then they are Autumn fruiting and when they are finished you can cut them to the ground or and dig up some of the roots to transplant them, I've done this and got good crop in the second year.

selyts

Some are still fruiting, I assumed this was due to the terrible weather we had during the summer and the much milder Sept/Oct we've had, but from what others have said these must be Autumn plants. There are some canes which look dead, no green and quite dry, which I was going to dig up and discard but I wonder if these are summer fruiting.

annie123

You may have both types then. Link below with how to look after them. Dont move the autumn ones just yet but maybe mark them (string around stem or something) so you know which ones are autumn ones.

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=148