April 16, 2011
I have a 400 square foot garden over at Brentwood Communitry Garden. The garden is managed by the Parks & Rec Department of Portland. For a fee of $75 per year I lease the plot and work the garden. I helped install the garden last year for it's inaugural season. The 2010 harvest was okay, but not great. As all Portlanders recall, it was a long, late spring and was cold till mid-July. Just not a great growing climate for warm-season vegetables.
So on to this year. Today, I visited the garden and found surprisingly few weeds in the garden. Not bad at all. It took me about an hour to week out all 400 sq feet. Nice!
Also of note, my 10 foot run of raspberry bushes exploded. I planted four clumps last spring. They did okay but didn't bear much fruit. Raspberries are an interesting plant. First year canes do not bear fruit. So the first year long canes stretch out from the center and then get kinda woody over the off-season. These woody canes are the fruit-bearing stems of the following year. There are about 20 good first year canes, maybe more. There are about a hundred 2011 canes coming up. So I'm off to do a little research and decide how much to thin out my first year canes.
I grew raspberries down one side of my garden path. I grew hops down the other. After 3 years my path was gone and my raspberries and hops were in an epic battle for dominance.
ReplyDeleteHow did you prune new canes? For instance, I have a 10 ft x 4 ft zone planted with 4 originals. I have new canes all over the place. So how many canes should I keep this year, I wonder? All of them? Just prune them back from the edges and let them run?
ReplyDeleteI just tried to cut them into a shape that wanted. When new growth came up that was getting too far outside of the space, I didn't cut, but rather pulled it up trying to get the root as well. After the season, I would just hack everything down pretty short.
ReplyDelete