Grow – Cook – Make

I have been thinking of raspberries. In the middle of February, bare-root season basically over, I get this urge to grow raspberries. A quick look at Bay Laurel Nursery and I’ve got my choice: Indian Summer and Heritage Red, both everbearing red raspberries.

The soil in the orchard is rather uneven, deep and rich in some spots, shallow and rocky in others. Raspberries don’t need much depth, so shallow will do fine, but better add lots of compost, they need rich soil. Let’s build a raised bed with some leftover redwood boards, lots and lots of 1/2 inch chicken wire to keep gophers away, and the help of a dear friend. I have a few iron fence posts laying around that will make perfect supports for the growing canes.This photo shows the raised bed structure: 6 x 2 redwood boards, supported by stakes and held together with metal straps. The whole bed is lined with chicken wire. The posts need to go in at this time, later on I can string wire between them to support the canes.

We enriched the original soil with a good amount of compost, planted the bare-root raspberry canes and watered well. If it were not for the blue labels it would be hard to even notice the little sticks. I hope in a couple of years this bare bed will be dense and loaded with berries.

This entry was posted on February 17, 2010 at 12:33 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.