The Blackberry Jungle

The fenced area where the raspberries are planted is roughly the size that my whole back yard was in Boulder. Only (only?) about one third of it is occupied by raspberries. The rest is blueberries that the birds devoured, a hostile tangle of thorny blackberries, and weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. Today, I tackled the latter two and made admirable progress. 

While the blackberry canes tore at my clothes and pierced through my gloves, I wondered if I was getting some sort of revenge. At the same time, I weeded away much of the other plants that were competing for nutrients that the bushes need to grow. I considered titling this blog, "The Blackberry, Vinca, Mugwort, Wisteria, Weed, etc. Jungle" but it didn't have a good ring to it. 

One of three wheelbarrows full

Hoping for easy pickings

These berries better be worth all the pain and suffering. They are puny runts compared to the gigantic succulent blackberries that would drip off my former neighbor Paulette's bushes. In Colorado, with the cold nights, the berries didn't ripen until September and sometimes a frost would come too early and there would be no berries at all, which made the years they did ripen all the sweeter.

I wrapped the remaining berries around tomato cages to try to make order out of the chaos and make it less dangerous to pick berries when they ripen. I might also have made it easier for the birds to eat them.

Biodegradable weed mat

Then, I put down cardboard as weed mat. The cardboard also highlights how much I actually accomplished. You might notice that the upper right side of the photo is still a tangled torturous jungle.

Just in case the blackberries don't turn out, I saw new blossoms on the raspberry bushes, so I can look forward to a second crop of raspberries before too long. 

Raspberries 2.0