For those of you who know me, you’re well aware know that I jump into whatever I am doing head first. I start reading up on whatever I’d like to do and, BAM, like half an hour later (okay maybe an hour later) I’m a “Subject Matter Expert”. Before you know it, I have a plan on how I’m going to implement whatever craziness I just decided on for our whole family, and sometimes they’re just kind of stuck going with the flow…! (Sometimes I’m greeted with a disapproving stare, but I still try…)
So, there we were, we had rented an auger to dig the holes for some posts that now surround what my husband refers to as my “Maximum Security Chicken Prison”, and we had three fence posts left over. We had repurposed the posts from when we had our goats and the fact that we had three left over was slowly eating me alive. I knew Brian had rented the auger for two days, but it was only the end of day one. Surely I could come up with another project before we had to return that thing…!?
I thought through this all evening (I may have stayed up far too late doing a ridiculous amount of searching online that evening…) and decided that we could set up a nice trellis system so that we could grow our own raspberries!
Naturally, left-over fence posts clearly equate to a raspberry trellis! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.
Now, I helped Brian with the auger and sunk the holes for all of the fence posts, BUT once we had to put that one-foot extension on to dig the holes a little deeper, I struggled to lift the auger up high enough to get it out of the ground. (I know, short-people problems!) Brian’s dad came to help finish out all the original post holes with the one-foot extension while we were building our chicken prison, I mean our chicken run. Thankfully one of our neighbors was willing to help Brian sink those last three post holes for the raspberry trellis idea that I had.
In true Jen fashion, I started shopping online for raspberry plants before we even dug those last three post holes. We ordered four apple trees last year and we loved them, so I had planned on buying our raspberry plants from the same nursery as well, but because of the price, they were going to have to wait a while. BUT, I must be rubbing off on my husband because he asked me if there were any sites where I could use some of my rewards points to buy any of the plants. He suggested I look on Amazon. I don’t know how I hadn’t already thought of that (since I buy pretty much everything on Amazon), but honestly, the thought of buying live plants on Amazon had never crossed my mind.
Anyway, we do have an Amazon credit card, so I had plenty of rewards points stashed and I managed to get five gold raspberry plants, five red raspberry plants, two black raspberry plants, and two blackberry plants for free! Jackpot! Why not use my rewards to get free fruit plants! I was ridiculously excited, so of course, everything was on order by the time we put the auger away! (Yea, I’m aware that I may have a slight online shopping issue, but that’s for another post…)
The estimated delivery date was between a week and two weeks out, so I figured we had time to set the posts, get everything tilled up, and maybe even relax for a few days by the time the plants arrived. Well, that was a generous estimate, and everything showed up on our front porch four days later. I instantly started unpackaging everything and asked Brian if he had any gas in the barn for the tiller. He explained that maybe I shouldn’t try to run the tiller around the concrete that was potentially still setting… (Minor technicalities)
I just assumed that he was being extra cautious (and didn’t want to get stuck helping me till up the grass). So I just nodded my head in agreement and read through the instructions that arrived with the plants and instantly started to second guess my decision to try to grow raspberries. I had no idea what bare-root meant when I ordered them, I had just thought that they knocked the dirt off the roots for shipment to make things cheaper and a little more convenient to pack. However, as I read the planting instructions I thought, oh crap, I may not have the patience for all of this! Bare-root plants were appearing like they were going to be a bit more temperamental. Again, those of your that know me should be well aware that I don’t have much of a green thumb, I put plants/seeds in the ground, I make sure they get water occasionally, and I just cross my fingers and hope they grow.
I also swung by the barn to let Brian know that I only knocked down one of the three posts that he had just set while I was running the tiller. If he could have stared a hole through my head, I’m pretty sure he would have. Of course, I was only joking, but he didn’t seem super thrilled. (Probably because he was trying to focus on his car while I was screwing off and joking about the tiller, haha)
I guess I should have started our raspberries indoors and allowed them to get established. However, I didn’t have that many 1-gallon-sized containers to plant them in, nor did I have that kind of patience, so I decided to take my chances. In the ground they went, and thankfully the next week or so was pretty overcast, and kind of rainy, so it wasn’t hot enough to kill the plants. I have searched online at least half a dozen times since I’ve planted these things just trying to figure out how long bare root raspberries take to surface once they’ve been planted. I kept getting similar answers, which was that it would take about 4-6 weeks… …I just want to stress how hard it has been for me to wait that long without trying to dig up the roots to see if anything looked like it was growing.
Now, fast-forward to today! Look at what I see! FINALLY!!! I can see some decent growth! I thought I saw some growth a few days ago, but over the last two days, I’ve been able to see that it’s clearly the raspberry plants that are growing (and not just some random weeds sprouting).
Well, I managed to get lucky this time around and the raspberry plants seem to be growing and in decent shape (I also managed to not frustrate Brian too much this time around). However, I may want to invest in a small greenhouse or maybe some patience. I’m sure I could work at least one of those things into the budget over the next couple of years. But I’m not sure I could find any patience on Amazon. If you happen to find some, let me know where I can pick some up.