Berried Treasure

This week (in the very cold weather) I have managed to plant 8 raspberry canes. Here's what I did.

I banged in two scaffolding poles so that I now have a line of them all along the top of the trench and wound galvanised wire around them so that I now have a "trellis" of wire for the raspberries to grow up against.

I uncovered the trench that I had prepared earlier (see blog "berry good") and dug in the leaves that had covered it. They have been composting down nicely into a rich thick dark mulch. I dug the trench about 12" deep and and gave it a very generous covering of blood, fish and bone which I very lightly forked in. Next I got one of my £1 compost bags and emptied it all along the trench and then lightly forked that in too. Next I placed the raspberries (which had been soaking for about an hour) along the trench, two to each scaffolding pole - one either side - and back filled the trench with the earth/leaf mould mixture. On top of all that I emptied another 4 bags of leaf mould mixture and gave the raspberries a good watering.

Next I turned my attention to the blackcurrant bush. I dug a big hole about 10" deep and added some more compost and leaf mould mixture. I placed the bush into the hole and back filled with compost. I placed a generous amount of leaf mould mulch all around the base of the bush and gave it a good water too.

Hopefully with all this preparation and some TLC we will have good harvests of berries for many years to come. I took a photo of the trench after I had mulched it with leaf mould, and although you can't really see the raspberry canes, but you get the idea.