I planted six raspberry canes last year and two didn't make it. The bed had a bad case of couch grass that didn't help.
The situation is this. First I put compost around each of them and bought shredded bark mulch to go on top.
The two bags full, didn't stop the grass, within a week it grew right through it.
Then I decided to tarp over it with a permeable black fleece, but had to cut a rectangle out to fit the rasperries through and leave space for them to send up new canes. The grass is now growing there too. So I put dryed grass clippings on it. Is this too much of a good thing? How do I water this? Should I reduce the grass layer?