Asparagus and Blackberries

For some minor catch up, Jeremy spent time this week finishing off the poles for the garden fence.  He did some very nice chainsaw work to notch some neat arches over the future gates and he put in solid braces at all the corners and gate posts.  We'll be ready to string wire soon!

Today was another glorious spring day and we spent it moving our blackberries and some of the asparagus out to the farm.  The aparagus was quite the chore.  After digging for over 2 hours, I finally had to admit defeat.  Prying one of these 7 year old crowns out of the asparagus bed needed someone with more weight on the shovel!  The kids and I switched our attention to the blackberry canes growing in our front yard.  It only took a little while to dig them up.  Between those and the ones that we started from cuttings last year, we ended up with 23 plants!

Shortly after digging the blackberries, my brother came by.  He graciously offered to help pry the 2 asparagus crowns I'd been working on out of the ground and we had them in a tub for transplanting in a jiffy.  When Jeremy came home, we made short work of the other 2 crowns in that row.

Then we loaded all the asparagus starts in the greenhouse, the ones we'd dug up and all the blackberries up into the Ford to take to the farm.  It was a bed full of plants!  The asparagus went in first.  We alternated small starts from the greenhouse with the larger mature crowns.  In total, we had 16 asparagus plants. 

The mass of roots in the middle of the hole is one of the mature crowns being planted.

 

Planting asparagus - you can see the green fronds of the greenhouse grown asparagus in the foreground - they're about a month ahead of the others.

 

Next, we turned our attention to the blackberries.  These will be growing along the west fence around the garden to form a living screen from the road.  We started by loosening the soil in a line where the fence will be.  Next, we added a top dressing of topsoil from the soil mountain and last, we planted the blackberries.  The 23 plants will quadruple the number we had in town if they all survive.  I can't wait!

Jeremy breaking up the row while I planted blackberries.

 

 

Watering in the blackberries.  Check out the future gate!

 

There was lots of watering in to do with the 3 vegetable beds, the entire bed in front of the greenhouse and the blackberry row.  I suspect we will be spending quality time with the garden hose over the next several months.

On another positive note, it looks like all but 2 of our fruit trees survived the winter.  Several are already budding out!  I'm so excited to have those trees already planted and growing.  In another year or two, we'll have our own fruit!

Stay tuned - the warmer weather means much will be happening!