berry berry good

Our friends Mark and Anna are some dang generous folks. They know we're trying to get our little homestead up and running quickly -- the sheer number of perennials Anna has dug up from their own farm to re-home in ours is so incredibly neighborly of them!

On Sunday, I transplanted three blackberries, three red raspberries, and four black raspberries in various parts of the yard. I tore down the coldframe we erected back in December -- the seeds I tried to germinate in it were not very successful. I figure it might be due to the barn dust I used as soil, too much insulation (i.e., too hot), old seeds, or a combination of all three factors. It was cumbersome to access, so I dismantled the whole thing except the bed itself, top dressed it with some trucked in garden soil from the local yard, and made it home to the black raspberries (you can barely see the transplants sticking out of the bed, but they ARE there).

The fall garden behind the house has gone through a few revisions since I started it, but I think it has met its final calling as a partial berry patch. I staked the blackberry plants due to their height (those tobacco sticks that we found in the barn have come in handy for a million different things). I still spared the few remaining ragged broccoli plants because I'm really curious if they will actually produce, and the garlic is plugging along just fine. Remember how I said I was going to compost leaves the lazy way and not shred them first? Yea, impatience took over and they got ran over by a lawn mower several times to shred them to produce mulch for the blackberries and red raspberries. The pillowcases full of leaves that I used to insulate the rear of the coldframe got dumped out and also given the same treatment. Hopefully, it's not too acidic for the berries.

I made a little puppy deterrent fence for the potager herb garden out of what we think is river cane -- there's lots of it, and it's long, straight and easy to work with. The gooseberry that Anna gave us will go right in the middle. Don't tell me you don't wish you could be sitting out there right now reading a good book, amiright? Those chairs need a coat of spray paint, though.

They probably won't make it, but I transplanted some volunteer kale from the fall garden into the corner of one of the spring/summer garden beds, and the peas have decided to get a move on. Still debating trellis options for them -- wind can be a trellis' worst foe. Tonight is supposed to be the last freezing night for the foreseeable future -- LOTS of things are getting planted tomorrow.