Growing up on my parents’ homestead, we had an orchard with sour cherries, apricots, apples, plums, and rhubarb. In another field, they allowed a mulberry tree to grow. All that fruit musta rubbed off on me, cause every place I’ve lived I’ve felt the need to cultivate some fruit. Blueberries are a miserable failure for me (anyone try honeyberries? I hear they taste very similar, but are easy to grow…..), and I just don’t have room for trees (not to mention the mess a tree loaded with apples or cherries can make….not so bad on the farm where there are cows who will like them, but not so good in town where they attract raccoons and possums).
I had attempted to move my raspberries from our last home, but considering we moved in December, it was a lousy time to dig up and transplant them. Lucky for me, there was a little patch of black raspberries growing on the property. Two years and two location changes later, I’ve finally got it. This is my second large whipped topping tub full in a week.
The best part is that those berries came off of last year’s canes, which were small. Most of the growth you see on the hill here is new growth…..and they are thick and branchy and crazy. Other than a few suckers I had to chop off earlier this spring, they seem to be behaving as long as I keep the canes shorter that 3 feet or so…..AND they provide great erosion control for our hill. Eventually, I’m going to build stairs next to this to make harvesting (at least on one side) easier. I do have them staked up against a fence to encourage straighter growing.
