Kinda old

My first afternoon devoted to the garden. It’s clean up and assessment time.

First up the main raised bed.

Time for the important garden clean up equipment..

No point in turning it over, adding compost and soaking until I decide what I am actually going to do with it this year. (Story for another day.)

Otherwise Stella will just think I’ve provided her with a giant outdoor litter box.

There’s some berry bad news.

In this section of the tall framed bed only one of six raspberries has survived. (Truth be told, the other five were already in pretty bad shape last year.)

In another section, the gooseberry looks pretty dead, as do four of the five raspberry plants. Although they are struggling to produce growth, the two blueberry plants seem to be on their last legs. Can’t remember the last time I got a blueberry off either. And, yes, before you ask, they are different varieties to allow for cross pollination. (Elsewhere in this frame, the two black currants appear to have expired.)

Then there’s the bed inside the shorter frame.

The strawberries seem to be coming along nicely. As for the four dwarf blueberries… 

One is definitely dead. One is three quarters dead. The other two are two thirds dead.

As much fun as it is to plant a new dwarf blueberry every year to replace the one that’s died only to have mice steal all the berries just before they’re ripe, it is getting kinda old.

So, the question is: Do I take the secateurs to the three remaining, chop off everything that isn’t green and transplant them (with plenty of compost) into the tall framed bed? Then buy a few more strawberry plants and devote this bed exclusively to that fruit which does actually produce every year?

I think I might. I know I’ll get strawberries – possibly two crops if I’m lucky. If the dwarf blueberries don’t make it in what I’ve come to think of as the raised bed of death, so be it.

As for replacement raspberry plants? That’s getting kinda old, too.