Raspberry Arbor Work

Today, I made a fair bit of progress on the raspberry arbors.  I began by putting the wires back in place in the existing patches.  Melissa had already cleared out the dead canes so straightening the second-year canes was not difficult.

One patch was accidentally mowed down in the fall.  The wooden post at the end had rotted a bit and was broken off by a moose with an itch to scratch.  Without the post serving as a landmark, I ran the mower over the patch and cut the canes down to the ground. The fact that none of the bushes sent up any shoots this spring indicates that I may have cut them before they could send nutrients to their roots for the winter..

I replaced the broken wooden post with two T-posts and attached arbor wires.  There are some raspberries growing outside the designated patch areas.  These feral plants will be transplanted to the area that was mowed and we will attempt to tame them into a productive berry patch.

I also set up T-posts to make a new patch.  There were enough feral raspberries growing in a convenient area that I was able to encircle the majority of them with posts to form a new patch in the same line as an existing patch. “Encircle” is the correct verb, but “en-rectangle” would better describe the area created. Maintaining regular boundaries is important because it makes maintenance and harvesting much simpler.  Melissa teases me about making the garden boundaries needlessly precise, but I think a little extra time sighting along the lines to keep the patch edges parallel and perpendicular to each other pays off in the long term. As numerous grade school science fair experiments have shown: plants grow better when they can feel the care of their keeper.

There are four T-posts remaining.  These will be used to make another patch extension in the fall.  I will use broken berries to seed the new patch and transplant any plants that escape their boundaries during the summer.