Raspberry Plants

My good friend, M. gave me a raspberry plant a couple of weeks ago. I just now was able to tease out the separate shoots and plant 10 little earnest stems with stretching, reaching roots that look like thin bean sprouts. These guys are trying so hard!

The very cool thing about raspberry and blackberry plants is that when their canes arch over, fall to the ground and touch, the tip grows roots on the spot and gets even more nourishment coming up into the cane for more fruiting. So, my plan is to let the canes arch over, and just get a brambly area full of fruiting raspberry plants.

I looked up how to plant raspberry plants, and one site said that I really need to prep the soil for about 2 years. Um...that's not going to happen. I don't even have compost here right now. And, I'm not sure if I'm going to plant a cover crop in between the plants, as the site suggested I really should. The best I can say, is that I might weed, if I'm absolutely forced to. Also, I'm not going to put in a trellis to support the plants. Read my lips: Not. Going. To. Do. It. Not a "T" formation, nor a "V" formation. We're just going to let Nature do her thing and see what happens.

At Park Day, a bunch of us parents conspired to buy thornless blackberry plants from a catalog and we'll help each other plant those up and also prairie flowers and other native species. My friend, Neo-agrarian, told me I can weave the blackberry canes through my fence and get lots of fruit that way. Since I'll be planting a thornless variety, I can easily pull out the old canes as I need to, and prune any wayward malcontents.

Enough chit-chat here. My daughter is sitting in the tub, and when she gets out I'm going to prune her hair. It's Spring, we're busy around here!