Rasied Beds

If you're a regular reader, you know that I've waxed on and on about growing and replacing raspberry bushes in my garden. I believe that I last wrote about my last endeavor to grow raspberries on September 15, 2008, where I planted a red rasberry plant and a yellow raspberry plant. Well, the plants didn't do too well and didn't survive the winter. In place of the raspberry plants I'm now growing a thornless Araphao blackberry. So far it appears to be doing well and I hope it will be established enough to survive this coming winter.

As for the raspberries, I still refuse to give up on the idea of growing my own raspberries. So, this time I've decided to just create raised beds and park them on the southern side of my yard. This way, my current vegetable garden and flower beds stay intact (although, I think that I may have to rearrange the layout of my yard at some point in the future), I can manage the soil in the beds, the raspberry plants will get lots of sunlight, and hopefully the raspberry plants won't sucker outside of the beds.

The beds are simply designed and made out of untreated boards I had laying around in my garage. I made my mate build the beds, and both beds were built within three hours. I dug both holes for the beds, killed off the stumps that were growing into the fence, filled the beds with amended soil (e.g. composted manure, orgainc soil, peat moss, top soil), and planted the raspberry plants. It was a lot of work, but the finished product left me feeling quite accomplished.