Kitchen Garden Forum

Having failed to track down a source for Teri-Louise raspberries, which I don't think are grown commercially any more, I decided to dig up my existing plants, which must be now ten years old, but still producing huge numbers of berries each, and take them to my new allotment.

Pressed for time, I had to almost wrench them out the ground using a spade and was amazed to find that I wasn't finding lots of tiny root hairs beneath, just a really solid piece of wood with the odd side branch sticking out. Contrast this with 10 one-year Erika canes I got at a local nursery, which has lots of root hairs and not much else.

I'm a bit worried that I may have taken the Teri-Louise's out too quickly and left root hairs behind, but even lifting one plant very gently didn't seem to reveal any root hairs there. Most odd!

Anyway, I took them to my new allotment and healed them in; they'll get planted in their final home hopefully by the end of the coming week.

About 7 years ago, I moved most of the plants between allotment sites in my previous town, lifting them after dark. Not only did they transplant fantastically, but produced masses of fruit the same year.

Other people I have known kill raspberries as soon as look at them

lifting them after dark

We are not very keen on planting by the moon! Why by the way?

Raspberry root systems are very strange, perhaps that is why they suffer from various rots, I think you will get a fair proportion to live.

I had to lift the plants after dark, since I was preparing the new beds during the day time and ferrying plants out of my old plot in the evening. I only mentioned this, because in that much earlier move, I have no idea what the root systems were like, but they loved being in their new site: south facing, but with roots in the shade, which seems to be the ideal climate for raspberries. I know this, because people used to cross the road to avoid me: they didn't want to turn down offers of more raspberries during the harvest season and there are only so many you can eat and freeze!!!

Good luck with the raspberries Barry. I moved some that were a few years old first into a very large pot after they had fruited last summer and into their final position three weeks ago. I had to clear and prepare the space and had taken a lot longer than planned to do it.

Some of these had rather woody roots and some more divided, but none had fine root hairs. I checked them yesterday and can see new shoots being produced from the base of most of them. So I'm not expecting a crop this year as I've reduced the length of the existing canes by two thirds and hope the new shoots from the base will form canes for next year. They are Glen Ample one of my favourites.I also moved some yellow fruited ones early last year and they established and fruited last summer.

I must say I wondered what the significance of moving them in the dark was

I think the main thing is to keep the roots from drying out and give them a feed and a good mulch.