Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Another Boring Yard Update

Despite having promised specifics on the latest back yard plantings, until today I was happily letting it slide into the realm of OBE.

Typical lazy me.

Then this morning I noticed Nourse Farms had a Blogger banner ad. All the raspberry and blueberry plants are from their nurseries.

So I clicked over -- incidentally the first time I've visited an advertiser's site from the Bohica.

Their pages are unchanged, but the coincidence motivated me to make good on the 12 April posting pledge and provide these details.

Yes, the saga of the 25 assorted raspberry and blueberry plants.

Here is the back story:

Spring 2002 -- during the last hyperactive planting cycle -- back when Brad went into the front yard and I began to reacquaint myself with my long standing hatred of lawns -- and the Bohica began... (yes, its been over a year) I bought some raspberry and blueberry plants from the base exchange -- with the best of intentions.

Being all about antioxidants, I figured they'd be a productive addition to the landscaping. Nothing I like better in the morning than fresh berries on a bowl of oatmeal.

However, rainy weather and my procrastination combined to create failure. They not only didn't thrive -- they never really had a chance. These are the plants mentioned in Raze, Burn and Salt the Earth. Yes, I am a plant killer, but I'm ok with that.

This year, I resolved to do better -- but decided to be more scientific about plant selection. So I went online and found a couple of nurseries that seemed to have their act together.

Their catalogs arrived and Nourse had the best prices and product presentation.

While I was in California, the plants arrived via UPS in an oversize brown paper bag. My way kewl next door neighbor put them in her living room until I got home two days later.

Not wanting a repeat of last year's berry holocaust, I resolved to get right on it. Nourse had included detailed planting instructions and reading through the booklet, I realized what a project this was going to be.

It ended up taking me three afternoons of excavation and five trips to Wal-Mart to do it right.

Admittedly, my choosing to drive a Del Sol does reduce hauling capacity. But all told, I ended up with 20 forty pound sacks of mulch, 6 fifty-eight pound sacks of specialty potting soil, and 10 forty pound sacks of topsoil. Plus there is the fertilizer to turn the soil more acidic.

To space the plants correctly, I ended up digging beds two foot across by one foot deep. Plus I went down an extra foot deep at each plant location. It ended up being over fifty foot of beds. I placed most of the raspberries -- the Caroline Red, Anne and Kiwigold varieties -- along the fence I share with the way kewl neighbor. I didn't have room there for the five Autumn Bitten, so I place them in front of the grapefruit trees.

The blueberry bushes -- Chandlers -- are in the low area near the nectarine tree. I also scored a Rabbit's Eye blueberry from some plants my mom had and stuck it near the Chandlers. Evidently blueberries do better when there are more than one variety in the same area.

Its been nine days since they went into the ground and the blueberries are going great guns. They are leafed out and about two foot high -- six inches taller than when they arrived. The raspberries are also showing signs of life. Not as dramatic as the blueberries, but the raspberries are starting from root stock. Seven of the twenty have greening ranging from small leaf buds to leaf growth two to three inches long.

Hopefully the beasts will thrive and make tunneling half the yard up worthwhile.

posted by Bohica at 8:34 AM