We’re planning to transplant some of our favorite plants from the backyard of the old house when we close on the new house; in the four years that I’ve lived here, all I’ve learned is that gardening is a slow, must-be-patient business, and I want to give our new property an early start at becoming as developed and mature as we can make it. Plants are a big part of this plan, and right now, though you haven’t seen the yard yet, I can tell you that we have a nice blank slate. No big ol’ garden beds from the previous owners to figure out.
From our current-old yard, berries are one of the things we are dead-set to transplant. There are many berry plants that are well-established, producing an array of blackberries, red raspberries, and wine berries, all of which were themselves transplants from our parents (and one from a sneaky sampling taken a few years ago from the side of a countryside road, shh). All of those plants generate plenty of offshoots every spring (like the ones popping out of the planter boxes, they’re a lot bigger than you saw a few weeks ago), so we’ll help ourselves to those and let the big bush in the back left unharmed. It’s lush with blossoms.
Late in the winter or early in the springtime (I forget) a local nursery offered a Groupon ($40 of merch for $20) so we each bought one (do the math, $80 of plants for $40). At the time, we actually intended the splurge to help out our current backyard – whenever it was that the deal was offered was actually before we had found our almost-home – with good intentions of buying up a lot of perennials and hostas. With the recent-upcoming-exciting changes in our housing situation, we decided to treat ourselves to special plantaloons for our new abode instead.
It didn’t take us long to agree that we wanted to establish some additional berry plants to accompany the ones we were going to transplant, so we brought home these: two blueberry bushes, and two raspberry plants. And never mind the amazing welded steel tables for now – a friend of Pete’s surprised us with those hand me down’s last week and they’ll eventually have a home in our new workshop. I left them in the shot… because I couldn’t move them… but I left the Weber grill in the frame so that you could appreciate the scale of both the plants and the tables.
The nursery had many raspberry options, but none of the variety I really hoped to find, the Fall Gold raspberries (best berries ever, do it). Instead, we invested in a Latham Red Raspberry, and a “New Logan” Black Raspberry.
Word on the street (a.k.a. mom) says that the raspberries will be fine in our deer-filled backyard, but we’ll have to take extra precautions with the sweet blueberries. Here comes learning!
Speaking of the blueberries, one is a traditional plant (an O’Neal Blueberry), but the other is one neither of us had tried before, a Pink Lemonade Blueberry that actually/allegedly bears pink fruit. It’s the plant that stands the tallest of the bunch in the above picture, and it already shows signs of summer berry lovin’. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited to have them.
Meanwhile, the irises, poppies, and peonies opened in the past few days and it’s a delight to have the fresh cut flowers in our living room while we pack.
How does your garden grow?
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Impressed with all of your thriving berries. Yum. My peonies just opened up last week and the roses have many blooms ready to open.