Berry Time
I have been patiently waiting a year and a half for the raspberries to do something other than hide the ugly electrical box in the backyard…. and this morning they made it worth every single day.
Not knowing anything about raspberry bushes I had no idea when they were ready to pick. Do they start to fall off, or do you have to cut the thorny stems with clippers? I had no idea and in the back corner of the yard I was without a google-enabled device to answer this pressing question. So I took the plunge and pulled one off.
It felt like a raspberry should and I had been doing the organic thing with the bushes this year so I poped it in my mouth.
Wow.
I like raspberries from the grocery store and buy them whenever they are on sale, but this berry blew all of those out of the water. It was so sweet.
So I immediately got a basket to collect all the berries in and proceeded to eat one and then put one in the basket. And then eat another two and then put one in the basket.
Here is what made it back to the sink. Where they were promptly eaten before their flavor had to spoiled with refrigeration.
I planted two different varieties of raspberries-the classic pink/red color and another variety that ripens to a peach color.
Looking at the bush, I should be getting larger and larger harvests because there are so many on there that are not ripe yet. So we will be trying to consume them as fast as we can as well as freeze the extras for future smoothie making.
If you are a beginner garden like me and thought about trying raspberries, I would say go for it . The first year of no fruit stinks, but my four plants have taken off this year and other than having the painful task of tying the thorny branches to a trellis, I have pretty much left them alone. They have been disease and pest free with no intervention and I am not nearly as diligent in watering them as I am the other veggies. They spread and need full sun, so if you have those criteria I would plant some and start counting the days until your first berry crop. They fruit on two year old canes, so after this years harvest is complete, I will cut back all those branches and let the new canes grow so that they are ready for fruit next year.
Unfortunately, there was one nuisance that I could foresee ruining my happy berry day.
And I knew that as mad I have been at the rabbits for killing all the spinach and eating countless other plants, if birds got all the berries that I had waited two years for,….well I just might explode.
So now the berry bushes now look like this.
Hopefully the birds and I can remain friends. While I am enjoying every single berry.
Not knowing anything about raspberry bushes I had no idea when they were ready to pick. Do they start to fall off, or do you have to cut the thorny stems with clippers? I had no idea and in the back corner of the yard I was without a google-enabled device to answer this pressing question. So I took the plunge and pulled one off.
It felt like a raspberry should and I had been doing the organic thing with the bushes this year so I poped it in my mouth.
Wow.
I like raspberries from the grocery store and buy them whenever they are on sale, but this berry blew all of those out of the water. It was so sweet.
So I immediately got a basket to collect all the berries in and proceeded to eat one and then put one in the basket. And then eat another two and then put one in the basket.
Here is what made it back to the sink. Where they were promptly eaten before their flavor had to spoiled with refrigeration.
I planted two different varieties of raspberries-the classic pink/red color and another variety that ripens to a peach color.
Looking at the bush, I should be getting larger and larger harvests because there are so many on there that are not ripe yet. So we will be trying to consume them as fast as we can as well as freeze the extras for future smoothie making.
If you are a beginner garden like me and thought about trying raspberries, I would say go for it . The first year of no fruit stinks, but my four plants have taken off this year and other than having the painful task of tying the thorny branches to a trellis, I have pretty much left them alone. They have been disease and pest free with no intervention and I am not nearly as diligent in watering them as I am the other veggies. They spread and need full sun, so if you have those criteria I would plant some and start counting the days until your first berry crop. They fruit on two year old canes, so after this years harvest is complete, I will cut back all those branches and let the new canes grow so that they are ready for fruit next year.
Unfortunately, there was one nuisance that I could foresee ruining my happy berry day.
And I knew that as mad I have been at the rabbits for killing all the spinach and eating countless other plants, if birds got all the berries that I had waited two years for,….well I just might explode.
So now the berry bushes now look like this.
Hopefully the birds and I can remain friends. While I am enjoying every single berry.
