[geeks] Greenery and brambles...

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, October 28, 2002 at 10:04:40 (-0500), Chris Hedemark wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Greenery and brambles...
>
> Or plant them tightly in four foot wide rows, as from either side of 
> the row it isn't hard to reach in two feet.

I picked raspberries all my pre-adult life in a quite large patch on our
farm in Sask. and from that experience I wouldn't want to work with rows
any more than two feet wide at the base.  It's hard enough to reach
through up to your elbow sometimes, even with a leather jacket on, but
the real problem is in finding all the fruit before it drops.  It takes
significantly more time, effort, and experience when you've got to find
it almost by touch.

There's also the issue of maintaining the rows too -- weeds and grass
creep in and getting them out without damaging the plants is difficult,
and of course the old canes need to be removed, carefully, every fall
too.

>From what I know about blackberries the tangle of vine-like canes is
even worse.  You don't want to be having to stick half your face into
the side of the bushes too!  ;-)

I really wish I had a plot of raspberries here.  However with this heavy
clay muck we have here I'd realy need a roto-tiller (or another five
years of ammending), before I could maintain a patch big enough to be
worthwhile (or to win a lottery so that I could spend more time in the
garden in the summer months than I do in front of the computer :-).
Unfortunately a roto-tiller heavy-duty-enough to handle this muck will
likely also be so wide as to eat up too much valuable space between the
rows.  We have a big back-yard, but it's not that big!  ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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