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.
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| Cardboard, compost and chips |
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Then we planted the strawberry plants in the compost between the blackberry and raspberries bushes.
