Bindweed in my Raspberry patch

[Harry]

Advice, please.
I have a patch of long established and pretty neglected raspberries. Unsure what species, but I've been advised to hard prune them for fruit in autumn. Last year, they got pretty much smothered by out of control bindweed, which eventually died back along with the raspberry foliage. The raspberries are just about starting to bud again, but I know there's lots of bindweed rhizomes lurking.
So.... Am I too late to remove and move the raspberries to newly prepared soil, so I can attack those weed roots.
Or is there another way I could suppress the bindweed.

Plot is also plagued by marestail, but that's not so prevalent in the raspberry area.

[Harry]

[JanG]

I think probably you're just on the edge of it being OK to try to move your raspberries, depending upon where you are and how far advanced your season is.

It's difficult to move raspberries without causing a lot of disturbance as the canes and roots go quite deep. Prepare deep holes in advance and dig well down.

In that sort of situation you could hedge your bets and move half perhaps, and try to get on top of the bindweed in  the vacated stretch, then next year move the other half earlier.

[small]

My raspberries, summer and autumn, are permanently bindweed infested. The years when I tackle each shoot as it appears, and get out as much root as I can, then i keep on top of it, but sometimes it gets ahead of me, ties all the stems together so I have to cut them apart to get at the fruit - but actually, it doesn't seem to have any bad effect on the plants or their growth. I'd be much more worried about the mare's tail if I were you, horrible stuff.

[Vetivert]

Unsure what species, but I've been advised to hard prune them for fruit in autumn.

Cutting them back all the way is a good method of determining whether they are a primocane or floricane variety, but won't guarantee you fruit in the autumn. They will only fruit in autumn if they are a primocane variety.

This is a tricky one as even mulching heavily won't guard against returning bindweed, and it always finds a way around suppressant. You might just have to chance digging the whole lot up and moving to a clean well-prepared row. Personally I'd opt for this - even if I lost 50% of the transplants I figure the initial reduced crop would be better than the yield and time lost to competing weeds year on year.

(If you do move them, double check to make sure you don't take any sneaky pieces of bindweed rhizome on the rootball.)
Good luck :)

[Paulh]

Some thoughts:

How well are the canes growing and fruiting? Are they worth saving or is it better to put new canes in a clean bed?

If there are spaces between clumps or you are clearing out some in order to move those, try putting a layer or two of cardboard down with wood chips or other mulch on top. In my experience, bindweed doesn't get through that and any bits that come up at the edges can be trained away from the canes and sprayed (the only weed I do that on).

You can move canes at any time, cut them back and they will re-establish but you may not get fruit that season. They tend to come up as bare roots, so that helpfully minimising the chance of transferring any bits of bindweed root.Do the cardboard / mulch tactic on the new bed.

I need to get out and do that with my own raspberries which have Jerusalem artichokes, nettles and brambles in them.

[Harry]

Thanks for the answers so far.

For the marestail, I'm getting a bit closer to being on top of it. What I have of that is mostly popping from shallow root pieces which I'm tugging out ASAP.

Both bindweed and marestail were lurking under carpet tile paths which I got rid of this year and which I'm forking through. The paths were a liability with those lurking rhizomes

I think I've decided that tackling the bindweed from that patch is more important than what raspberries I might get or lose. It's virtually unweedable at the moment and is spreading from there.

I'm inclined to shift out the canes, ASAP, planting them through cardboard* in an already prepared patch, then fork out bindweed to the max, cover with card* and plant some spuds and courgettes through it. Then cover with lots of wood chippings so that any bindweed roots will be easier to tug out.

*Card features heavily in my plans for weed suppressing. I don't particularly do no-dig with the old layer of compost. I've tried just pinning the card down and planting through two inch holes in it. Worked well for spuds last year and the card completely decayed away. Why does nobody seem to do this?

I get big sheets of plain card from ALDI every week. No tape, staples or dyes and the staff are please to see me take it.

[Harry]

I'd be much more worried about the mare's tail if I were you, horrible stuff.

Oddly enough, I no longer despise marestail. It's not greedy and apart from looking a mess, it does little harm to veggy yield, unlike bindweed, which seems to choke even my onions. Plucking out the roots of both is quite calming.

[Deb P]

I've had my plot 19 years and I'm still fighting bindweed and couch grass!
I ended up culling the autumn fruiting raspberries I inherited as they were overrun by the couch and trying to weed them was difficult as raspberries are notoriously shallow rooted and do not like root disturbance. I cleared and made a new patch which did well for a few years then came to the same sorry end!
I fork out the new bindweed as it raises its head, and annual mulching helps. I find If you just cover  bindweed it just grows under the cover, it's never smothered. When it grows into nice loose mulch it's much easier to pull out intact. I'm tempted to start a new bed but might go for summer fruiting raspberries that I can train up a support this time.

[JanG]

Did the couch grass diminish the vigour of the autumn raspberries? Apart from neatness I'd be thinking that couch grass and raspberries might happily co-exist?

[Vetivert]

From observing overgrown allotments I don't think raspberries or any small fruit plants co-exist well with grass. And as it is alleopathic I think couch grass in particular would be the worst offender. I've seen its victims!

[Deb P]

Did the couch grass diminish the vigour of the autumn raspberries? Apart from neatness I'd be thinking that couch grass and raspberries might happily co-exist?

It decimated the raspberry canes. Raspberries have shallow roots and the couch entwined with it so badly it sucked all the moisture out of the soil to the detriment of the raspberries. I tried clearing it as best I could and heavily manured the soil but it was also infiltrated by more couch grass!