A new year, a new adventure

Heh... whoda thunk I'd start this blog up again in February?

My next door neighbors are avid gardeners... and I tend to get inspired by their enthusiasm. When we started having multiple days in a row last week with no rain I had a feeling they'd start to dig up their yard and put seeds in.

Me? I'm not that inspired... I give up on starting from seeds... but I do admire their enthusiasm.

A few years ago they decided to put in raspberries - which is decently native to the area and therefore a rather smart idea. They started with 12 plants... 6 died, but the other six sprouted runners that came up all over the place. They dug up a few canes, and also bought 3 more plants for their second row. The rows doubled in width easily, then more sprouts came out further away from the original rows, making it nearly impossible to walk between them. Last year they dug up the wandering canes and used them to double the length of their rows, confining them with some support posts and guide wires... and as runners came out the sides again they dug them up and stuck them in pots to over winter. Last week he was pointing them out to me and asked me if I'd like "a couple plants"... and since this is bare root time, it's a good time to transfer them over.

This weekend I came home from shopping to find a wheelbarrow filled with compost and about 47 raspberry canes.

A "few" plants?!?

After Dan put in the fence across the back of the property last year, we put a few canes in (also from the neighbors) but we hadn't gated the front of the property yet, and the deer wandered in and ate a couple of them down. Now that we are decently fenced and gated, I feel pretty good about expanding our raspberry area along the fence... so I dug about 20 or so holes and dropped in about 30 of the tallest canes along 5 sections of the fence. I'm not entirely sure, given the light changes because of the trees surrounding, how well they will grown and produce fruit in the various sections, so I figured one long row, and we'll see what works where.

As to the garden beds.... I still want to do herbs up there in one of the plots, but the expanded bed is long enough - I've decided - to throw in a couple of cherry tomato plants and some summer squash. I know I said I was giving up on tomatoes, given that they originate from Mexico and I'm far too far north for them to work well... however... cherry tomatoes do decently well, and ripen much faster than regular tomatoes so they don't require so much heat. I'll not bother with cucumber though... the main reason I grew them was for pickling, and not only are small batches annoying to deal with, they also require a lot of heat, and it's infuriating when I don't get enough to grow them.

So... since I dug in the dirt yesterday, I guess it's officially the beginning of my gardening season. Next task: winter clean up - my yard is so frightening looking right now *shudder*