I helped my friend with move yesterday and was very surprised by the look of her raspberries and gooseberry bush I once planted for her several years ago. It was my own stock, Red Fall raspberries and unknown gooseberry, both pretty vigorous in my old yard. Raspberry was taller than me and gooseberry was at least 3 ft tall and 5X5. At her place raspberries primocanes were not taller than 10 inches - and had some green berries on them, which means they will not grow any taller. Gooseberry was about 1’ tall, 1’X1’. Other than to be tiny it looked like an adult bush, no obvious distress signs. It almost looked like banzai. The roots where all located in 1.5X1.5 area and when I took it out, all the soil stayed on roots, almost like it was growing in the pot, bit it was not. She complained before that her things do no grow well, but I didn’t realize to what extent. When I dug up the gooseberry I saw the soil was not completely dry and had good amount of organic matter. I know she used blood mill to give them nitrogen, but it didn’t help. Her site was on the edge of pine woods, had enough sun . Soil was poor, but didn’t look dead poor to me - other wild things were growing on it OK. No real competition though, other than trees. I thought it could be acidity, but raspberries should be OK with acidic soil. Anyway. I took gooseberry and planted this morning at my new yard. Will see if it will decide to grow.
get a soil test to know for sure
Too late, she sold the house and moving out.
Big trees will dwarf many plants. They have a big root system and steal water and nutrients from newly planted trees/bushes. It sounds like her plants hadn’t really established roots beyond what they had when planted.
Corn planted next to big trees is often stunted to half size even in good soil.
I had trees growing behind a fence that created shade. It did not kill the trees but they did not grow as fast as their potential either. Eventually the fence blew over by the wind. My trees grew as big as the same kind of tree was in one year once it got sun. Also this year we have been getting a lot of rainwater to the point we have not had to water. The plants have grown like crazy compared to past years.