Getting the Garden Ready for Spring

Yes folks, these are shots of my garden as of March 2009. Not much to write home about. Pretty hard to believe any produce came out of this mess. Winter is hard on gardens who weren't properly put to bed in the fall, and now I have to pay the price.



Today the temps are in the 70's which is a treat around the northwest for this time of year, so I spent some time trying to remedy the garden.

I trimmed back my everbearing raspberries that should have been cut to the ground last fall after they finished fruiting. I didn't take them all the way to the ground as they had already started some growth...don't want to shock them too much. The lower part of the canes will fruit some in July which will be welcome with the majority of the fruit coming at the top of the canes in September, an even bigger treat.

The marionberry canes were a tumbled and tangled mess. Many, many scratches later I sorted them out, tied them into clumps, and then wove them in a circular fasion on my horizontal wires so that the end of the canes are off of the ground. There were already plenty of them that had started to tip root. That would have been okay, but they had chosen to take root in the pathway.

The black raspberries never seem to produce juicy berries. They are always a little dried out. Perhaps I don't give them enough water, so this year I plan to focus on that a little more carefully. Their long gangly canes were cut back to about 5' and the dead canes from last year's fruiting were removed.

I took a look through the strawberries and was glad to see that they had about doubled their space from last year. Awaiting the first ripe strawberry is probably one of my most anticipated garden events each year.

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Keep tuned and see how this mess rights itself and starts producing the berries and vegetables we so look forward to.