Raspberries and Strawberries

With the gardens pretty much planted (for which I am so very glad) I am turning my attention to weeding. First up, the Berries.

Here’s the Raspberry patch. Right now I have three rows of plants that sorely needed to be weeded.

Lots of weeds and lots of Raspberry suckers. I am Ruthless when it comes to weeding the Raspberry patch and you should be to. If you aren’t ruthless, you will end up with Raspberry suckers all over your patch.

Since I want to keep my Berry plants in rows, I go thru and pull out Any sucker that is not in the row. Remember that Raspberries will fruit on last years wood, so don’t pull all the suckers out. I just like to keep mine confined.

I want more than 3 rows, so I will let some suckers on the far end stay. When I pull up suckers from the other rows, if they come out nicely with roots, I will plant them in that far row. Over time, I should be able to get about 5 or 6 rows of Raspberries in here.

Now the Raspberry patch is all weeded – all I need to do now is top dress the patch with some composted manure.

I got a trailer full of composted manure and top dressed all the Strawberry plants. I had done a good weeding job before the top dressing. The Strawberry beds should be fine now until they start sending out their baby plants, then I will need to get back in there.

The Strawberry plants are now starting to flower. It should only be a few weeks before the fruit can be picked. We love Strawberries and eat a lot of them. I also freeze some for making pies in the Winter.