There's a lot to negotiate on a farm. You think you have something figured out, and then a chicken, or an insect, or the weather... or a spouse... comes in a messes with your vision! This is the story of the berry patch.
I grew up with boysenberries in my back yard. When dinner wasn't ready quite soon enough, Mom would send us out back to play, where we'd usually end up at the boysenberry fence finding berries that we'd missed the evening before. In fact, there are STILL boysenberries in this SAME spot in my childhood backyard.
If you have never had a boysenberry, you can't know what you're missing, but know that you're missing something major. They have the je ne sais quoi of a raspberry, and the luciousness of a just-ripe blueberry, as well as the deep sweetness of a blackberry - without the subtle, slightly off-putting rancidity that blackberries seem to carry. In any case, they're stellar. AND they're super-easy to propagate. They do so themselves, quite naturally, but you can easily plant a cane one fall, and the following spring have a boysenberry plant!
Boysenberry plants, in their current/old location. They're just leafing out - which they do before blossoming! It's not an ideal time to move them, development-wise... however, it is a GREAT time to move them, human-relationship-wise! Note the slightly weedy-unkempt look of the bed... ahem.
SO: my dear mother supplied us with boysenberry plants when we moved up here. They're delicious, part of my childhood, and don't take up a ton of space. An easy "go", in my garden (notice the ownership, there... this becomes part of the challenge). So we - husband and I - agreed to plant them along the garden's north fence line. I promised to care for them: cut the year-old canes, pin up the new ones, weed, feed, etcetera. They're an exuberant plant, and did end up somewhat taking over that fence line. Not offensively so, but exuberantly. I was still caring for them, though, and Pedro - and CSA customers! - was reaping the spring/summer berry rewards... Great, right?
No so great for Pedro.
The plants were coming under the fence and showing up in the nearest garden bed... as well as growing wildly - exuberantly! - and creating nasty scratches on those brave enough to walk the pathway on the opposite side of the fence. Sigh. I still say: "small price to pay". However, it is not only my garden. Sigh. So they had to be moved.
The deal was that Pedro build a structure and I'd move the berries. It being Easter-time, this seems like a good opportunity to show the structure:
Boysenberry trellis in the making... looking oddly like three crosses in the middle of our property!
Pedro put the trellis structures in last weekend, and then over the last few days I scraped the ground of weeds with our Valley Oak Tools wheeled hoe, a most amazing tool (the piles of weeds and topsoil will be composted). I then forked loose an 18-inch-wide strip on either side of the trellis for the actual berry plants. In the photo above, the chickens are helping to cultivate. This is very hard work, so I welcome any help I can get!
This morning I planted the west side of the trellis (the right side, in this photo). (Sorry: no photos. I was too hot and annoyed to get my camera.) This afternoon we'll be wiring it up with two long wires connecting across the length of the main posts, and then another few wires creating a kind of umbrella structure across the cross-posts, at the top. And then I'll dig more berry plants (sigh) and have a brand-new boysenberry trellis to enjoy! Yay! Hopefully we'll get a few berries this year, but I've composted the soil really well so that they'll settle in this year and we'll have a bumper crop next year! AND now I'll get to pick both sides, and not be hemmed in by the garden!
Here's to hard work, negotiations, and a better solution out of all of it!
- Elizabeth