The message
from Pam Moore contains these words:

I have a patch of Autumn fruiting raspberries and currant bushes.
Due to a few years neglect the whole area is thick with couch grass
and bindweed which smothered the canes and bushes last year.
I have cut the raspberry canes down to the ground and pulled up as
much of the dead stuff as possible.

Ask a local shop to save cardboard packing cartons for you, and use
these (flattened) as a mulch between rows and between bushes. Weigh it
down with some bricks/planks. This will defeat most weeds; add another
layer as the card disintegrates. If you can add manure, grass clippings,
chipped branches, cut green nettles between the card layers, so much the
better. You'll have small areas around each stem where some couch will
come through; keep pulling it out by hand as often as possible and
eventually it will die off.

Janet.