The days are getting busier and busier. i can't believe we're only one week from planting the fields! In the meantime, we've been planting the kitchen garden and putting in berry patches. We ordered 12 raspberries plants, 6 blackberry plants and about 60 strawberry plants. They all came dormant and bare-rooted, wrapped in plastic. The raspberry and blackberry plants basically looked like little sticks with roots on them.
It's nice to have a reason to be happy about rainy, cloudy days this spring. It's much better for the plants to transfer them when it's wet and overcast. Luckily, Tuesday morning, when Mom and I planted the berry patch, was pretty gloomy. First, we measured out a spot for them between the drive way and the tilled fields. Our berry patch is 24' x 9'. We have 3 rows of raspberries 6' apart (4 plants each) and 2 rows of blackberries (3 plants each). Each plant is 3' apart. We planted them right into the ground, surrounding each bush/stick with a couple good shovel-fulls of compost. Next, we took cardboard and covered the ground all around the plants to smother the grass and weeds. Mom's been going to a bike shop and picking up cardboard boxes for the last couple of months, so we have a lot of big cardboard boxes saved up in the garage. We laid down compost around the rows of plants and wood-chips (free, from some tree guys that were chipping logs up the street) down on the paths.
Then we planted the strawberry plants in the compost between the blackberry and raspberries bushes.
It's nice to have a reason to be happy about rainy, cloudy days this spring. It's much better for the plants to transfer them when it's wet and overcast. Luckily, Tuesday morning, when Mom and I planted the berry patch, was pretty gloomy. First, we measured out a spot for them between the drive way and the tilled fields. Our berry patch is 24' x 9'. We have 3 rows of raspberries 6' apart (4 plants each) and 2 rows of blackberries (3 plants each). Each plant is 3' apart. We planted them right into the ground, surrounding each bush/stick with a couple good shovel-fulls of compost. Next, we took cardboard and covered the ground all around the plants to smother the grass and weeds. Mom's been going to a bike shop and picking up cardboard boxes for the last couple of months, so we have a lot of big cardboard boxes saved up in the garage. We laid down compost around the rows of plants and wood-chips (free, from some tree guys that were chipping logs up the street) down on the paths.
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| Cardboard, compost and chips |
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We've since had to put up temporary fencing around the perimeter to keep the dogs from chewing on the blackberry and raspberry sticks/bushes.
Unfortunately we probably won't get any strawberries this year but we should have raspberries and blackberries by the fall! We have also planted 10 blueberry bushes in the wet area between our two fields.
Zen Moment:
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