Apples and Raspberries together

Hello I am posting from Surrey in the UK
I have a very sparse autumn raspberry bed as some of the canes I planted last winter did not grow / died. In the large gaps I would like to plant a couple of M26 apple trees in the bed and create a plant guild with comfrey, daffodils, clover etc. I am a little concerned the raspberries might not be a good partner for the apples as they are shallow rooting and may be too much competition for the trees? However, there are only 4 raspberry canes in total. Does any one know if this would work or how I could make it work? Its a south facing bed in good fertile soil.
Im loving this forum, so much helpful info.

Thanks

Rebecca

Hi -in my opinion it would not be amiss to consider that raspberries usually grow like this:

Year 1: hm, have I planted enough?
Year 2: yeah, maybe it will work out
Year 3: anybody need raspberry plants? Please?

Our situation is the opposite of yours - rasps have been planted in a semi-established apple orchard; grafted on seedlings, so much stronger than M26, and already growing for 5 years. So I can't really say from experience how it would work out in your case. But I can say that if you're only planting apple trees because you're worried about there being too much empty space because of raspberries growing too modestly, that's most likely a problem that will solve itself.

(And if it really turns out that raspberries are not able to grow, nothing else will either I'd say

I had black raspberries under a cherry tree for 7-8 years.  Both did great that long then the raspberries weren’t doing too good and I moved them. I don’t think their decline had anything to do with the cherry tree.

Maybe a little off topic, but I have a feral/volunteer  asparagus plant growing right up against the trunk of a mature peach tree. Both are very healthy. I wouldn’t have thought the asparagus could compete, especially as a tiny seedling. The peach tree was already mature when the asparagus came up.

They seem to be getting alone fine around here even on very dwarfing rootstock. I would imagine with the larger apple trees if we had another drought you would be more likely to get raspberries as some will atleast be in semishade.

Asparagus might be another one you want to try I recently went to a commercial orchard here with mainly MM106 sized trees and was suprised to see the rows filled with asparagus plants.