Kitchen Garden Forum

On the companion planting theme - does anyone know whether beans/pea and raspberreis make good or bad bed fellows?

As the raspberries are fairly shallow rooted and have a permanent bed I wouldnt have thought planting anything in with them would be a good idea as you risk damaging the roots and anything climbing amongst them may promote grey mould (botrytis) forming on the fruit.

I'm with Piglet on this one. I keep most of my fruit well away from my veg.

I would suggest at least 5-6ft gap between fruit patch and vegetables. Salad stuffs can be put closer but only when you really have to. Soft Fruits require full sunshine so if you manage to shroud your fruit patch with ,say Runner Beans, you are denying the fruit of something most essentiial.
Nothing really to do with companion planting just plain common sense.

Remembering that raspberries are notorious for suckering you will need most of that gap to be able to control any suckers and to bend down to reach the bottom raspberries, and any weeds of course. If you have more than one variety of raspberries you will need an even larger gap between them to be sure that any suckers you take for subsequent replanting are the variety that you think they are.
On aspect, a row of beans always does best on the South side
Allan

Sorry - I should have been a little more specific - the bed is 3 x 3 meters and I have planted a row of new raspberry canes on a SW > NE Line along one edge and though I might put 2 rows of dwarf beans in so I had considered shade and wasn’t planning to use the raspberries as supports for the beans. I have laid some scaffold boards to divide the bed into 3 and just wondered if the Beans would suffer in close proximity to the canes or vice versa. It’s a temporary arrangement for 1 growing season as I plan to have strawberries on the reminder of the bed next year but thought the beans or maybe dwarf peas would help me prepare the soil for the strawbs next year – wadayathink?