Berries

I really enjoy gardening, and have had two or three gardens at previous residences. Although I LOVE my 1920 duplex in the city, because it was built on a side street corner, what would have been my decent-sized backyard has been subdivided into two lots and there is a tiny house built between my back porch and the alley, effectively eliminating my backyard and leaving no room for a garden. And even though I totally believe in gardening more than having chemical-lawns, my man disagrees, and won't allow me to till up my also-very-small front yard to grow veggies. For the second season in a row, he has been diligently tending the small patches of grass and they are starting to look like a lawn that any upper-middle-class-suburb-dweller could be proud of. So... that's nice, but still no garden.

So then there are the sides of my house. One side has a small bed that is approximately 2 feet wide, raised and bordered with railroad ties and right next to the sidewalk. Last year I moved and transplanted all the bulbs that had been growing untended for years into better spots, and filled the bed with mostly lilies, a few daffodils, and an occasional tulip. They are doing really well.

Then the other side has a bed running along it that is about 4 ft wide, low to the ground, with the neighbor's driveway next to it. This has become my berry patch.



The first two-thirds have been planted with red raspberry transplants from a friend's garden along with a few that I got a good deal on from a mail-order nursery. They were planted haphazardly halfway through the first summer I lived here and tended badly, so I didn't expect them to survive. Despite that, they grew again through last summer, giving me a few berries. Earlier this spring, before they started to bud, I pruned the canes down and am hoping that this is finally the year to get a good crop.



In addition, last summer, one of my roommates brought with her a couple of strawberry transplants, which we stuck in the ground, and which have EXPLODED this year. The strawberry section is creeping into the raspberry section where there wasn't quite enough sun for the raspberries to thrive. This is the first strawberry bloom of the season. (And yes, a weed.)



A few years ago, I bought Earthbound Farm's Food to Live By by Myra Goodman. They got their start growing raspberries and so have an entire chapter dedicated to raspberry recipes which I have been waiting for years to try, because grocery store raspberries are too expensive and never as good. (FYI- this is a great cookbook, highly recommended.)

So, needless to say, I am terribly excited about the prospect of a small berry crop this year, as this is my only edible plant besides the potted herbs that my roommate grows. I have dreams of homemade strained frozen raspberry yogurt, in particular.