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I recently purchased a house with a couple of rows of raspberries (which seem to be well established) in the garden. The first row on the north side was starting to disappear, so I trimmed it down expecting to take some of the many of the wild shoots that had spread to the south and start a new row.

So how do I go about plucking these shoots out of the ground and transplanting? Any special considerations for the new row, such as ground temperature, fertilizer or spacing? Should they be in a hill?

I live in western Washington state if that helps.

Niall C.
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Ryan Shdo
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2 Answers2

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Don't overthink it. They transplant reasonably well, as in, take a shovel, dig em up, replant quickly without giving the roots time to dry out (or dig up, heel in to keep the roots moist, then plant - but if you can do it in one step it's less work for you, less shock for them.)

I would question why that row is fading - if it just needed severely pruned, you've done that - if the plants are migrating to the south to find more sun, the current position of the north-most row may never amount to much.

Benefit or lack thereof of hilling probably depends on local soil conditions - if prone to water-logging, a hill helps. If dry (probably not in western WA?) the opposite direction might help.

For the remaining rows, I try to prune fairly severely - remove all canes that look "old" and any newer canes until there is 6" or more between each remaining newer cane. Without fairly hard pruning the fruit yields are poor. I also shorten remaining canes to 18" high or so. The lazy method if you have more space than you need is to have two plots/rows, and mow one every other year.

Ecnerwal
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    Thank you I really needed that inspiration and push. Did it a few days ago and everything is looking great! – Ryan Shdo Mar 09 '15 at 04:10
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Honestly rubrus are one of the easiest to establish. The hardest part of them is getting rid of them where you don't want them.

Digging up the root balls has very little advantage. You can just cut the canes off, and lay them down in a shallow trench where you want them and most of the nodes will develop into a new clone of the plant. If you really want, you can include the rootball, but it's really unnecessary.

The hardest part will be to get them top stop growing where they were previously. Although you can dig up the rootball, any significant root filaments have a good chance of sprouting later on. If it's lawn then it's no big deal because you will be continuously mowing, but if it's a garden then you'll have a harder time since each time the cane breaks ground, the crown gets a little bit stronger.

Escoce
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  • Thanks it's fixed. You can thank iPhone autocorrection for the typo. Like MS Word, sometimes it thinks it knows better than you what you want to say. :-) – Escoce Mar 26 '15 at 18:49