Tttthhhppppp!

This weekend I received my raspberry canes by mail order. They were bare root plants so I needed to put them in straight away, and managed to do so on Saturday before the rugby kicked off. I started by digging over about 18' x 3' of soil down one side of the allotment, with some help from the Moog, until I had to tie him to the fence to stop him getting carried away. After that I mixed in some manure; I could only get pellets unfortunately, I'd have rather had some well-rotted stuff to bulk up the soil but mine's not ready yet. I soaked the canes in a bucket of water and then planted them about 2ft apart. There are 9 in total, which seems a lot, but there are 3 of each variety - early, mid-season and autumn. Hopefully they'll settle in and last for years. Next job with those will be to protect them from the birds.

The only observation I can make about raspberry canes is the roots look a lot like the weeds I have just pulled out. Having said that, I'm happy to say there weren't as many roots in the eastern edge of the plot, so digging wasn't as hard as it has been in the past but there was still a good sprinkling of glass, plastic, wire, string and old batteries to remove.