I love raspberries! Tasmania is a great place to grow raspberries – it has the right kind of weather – and I keep telling Jeff its the main reason we moved here.
Last season my two modest rows of raspberry canes produced a massive 31 kilos of fruit! (around 70 pounds)
I still have several bags of frozen raspberries in the freezer ready for whenever I want to cook something ‘raspberry’
Today ended up being a day to attend to the wayward canes. I went down to the market this morning to pick up some wheat and hay for the chickens. While chatting with a few different people, I learned that everyone was pruning and planting their canes! Right! Best get right onto that!
I still have to take the lines that run along the canes down and restring them tighter so they have something to give them a bit of support.
I also tied bundles of them together, which also helps support them – we get a lot of wind here!
I pruned a lot of them back. Mostly it was easy to tell if the cane was dead and needed cutting out completely, but sometimes taking the tip off you can see the green in the cross section. Of course, those ones I left in to hopefully produce another great crop later this year
Quite a lot of new canes have been poking up through the ground in places that are not convenient. I got to, and dug a lot of them out by the roots. I ran out of time today, but I plan to dig another row and put these back in
I cut out a LOT of dead canes.
I figured I might as well drag out the little mulcher and put all these dead canes through and add it to my new compost bins.
Well…That’s almost another tick off the long gardening list.
I hope your Sunday has been fantastic!
Cheers
PS Occasional extras on my Facebook page
Hey, Lisa
What kind of mil her do you have? I dream of an industrial sized monster but the one you have is probably more realistic 🙂
I’ll have to go out and take a peek for you. Its just one we picked up a Bunnings a while back. For the size property we have and the things we do, it seems pretty perfect. It wasn’t that expensive from memory either – $100 or so?? Its really easy to just wheel out, do a quick job and put away. Stay tuned …
Oh Lisa, wish my canes looked as neat as yours! You must have thorn-less. When I trim my plants, all the sticks and leaves get put into brown paper refuse bags the city composts. In the past, I’ve gotten pierced too many times working my compost when there were pieces of berry canes and leaves in it. The black berry canes are the WORST. Threatened to dig them out this spring, and guess what they did? Best season yet for flowers, which means berries later the summer. Go figure, should have previously talked nastier to them?
Oh NOTHING has thorns like a blackberry!! Even the leaves are booby-trapped!! They are a major pest in Australia actually, but we risk all to go collecting the berries to make jam!!
My canes have small prickles but not really grabby thorns. They are fairly easy to work with.
lol, re the threats! We did that to a couple of fruit trees that we were going to pull out… then they grew really well, so we left them alone! 😀
Love reading! You are such a hard worker – wish I had your energy!
Thanks Diane! It will be all worth it in December (I hope!!)
Do raspberries have thorns? I like the flavor, but those seeds! They can get under my bridges and cause discomfort.
Are you doing compost or vermiculture in your bins?
The raspberry canes are a little prickly but no real thorns. I mostly work without gloves, so they are not too bad.
Jeff hates seeds as well! Means a lot more raspberries for me! lol. Sometimes I make a special batch of jam and de-seed it completely (good wife)
Just compost, altho I threw a bunch of worms in, but its not specifically a worm farm. I am curious to try that one day. The handful of worms I got from Margie’s husband, Des, have thrived in the other compost – they multiplied hugely!