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Care and feeding of raspberries
If you have any raspberries or blackcurrants, then this is the best time of year (just as the new leaf growth is starting) to feed them. About three inches of manure or compost all round them (go out at as far as the bush goes and maybe a little bit more). Don't let the compost/manure touch the stems - give a couple of inches space.
If you have gooseberries or redcurrants, they should already have had a couple of inches (goseberries come into growth a little earlier), but better late than never.
Remember, if you like soft fruit, you need to feed them. They can't give you the fruit unless you give them the nutrients to grow the fruit.
(strawberries are different - being very low growing, it isn't practical to use manure/compost, so you prepare a very nice bed indeed and create a new one every three years)
In the winter, when all the leaves have died, cut out at ground level (or an inch or two above if you can't reach easily) all canes that have borne fruit that year. (in the case of autumn fruiting raspberries, that will usually be all of them. In the case of summer fruiting raspberries, it will be around half of them)
Grass clippings make a good mulch for raspberries (and lots of other things too) and are a very effective way of suppressing weeds while adding organic matter and nitrogen to your soil. Cut your grass, and sprinkle the fresh clippings (and inch thick is fine) around your fruit bushes.
If you have gooseberries or redcurrants, they should already have had a couple of inches (goseberries come into growth a little earlier), but better late than never.
Remember, if you like soft fruit, you need to feed them. They can't give you the fruit unless you give them the nutrients to grow the fruit.
(strawberries are different - being very low growing, it isn't practical to use manure/compost, so you prepare a very nice bed indeed and create a new one every three years)
In the winter, when all the leaves have died, cut out at ground level (or an inch or two above if you can't reach easily) all canes that have borne fruit that year. (in the case of autumn fruiting raspberries, that will usually be all of them. In the case of summer fruiting raspberries, it will be around half of them)
Grass clippings make a good mulch for raspberries (and lots of other things too) and are a very effective way of suppressing weeds while adding organic matter and nitrogen to your soil. Cut your grass, and sprinkle the fresh clippings (and inch thick is fine) around your fruit bushes.
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Our raspberry canes are rampant; I've never fed or watered them and they produce loads of good quality fruit since they re-colonised their piece of garden (apparently the previous tenants planted them pre-1970). I do thin them and remove dead and weak canes though. Otherwise they're left alone, apart from picking the fruit of course. It's possible they benefit from bonfire ash, odd grass clippings and other debris though.
Being underneath a plum tree, one blackcurrant bush probably benefits from rotten plums and leaves. I can't imagine what the whitecurrant benefits from, and the old blackcurrant bush is on its way out, though that seems to be more to do with ants and aphids rather than feeding.
The strawberries must feed themselves too - dead leaves etc.