An hour in the spring garden
21.08.2023 - 11:53
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
I spent an hour or so in the garden yesterday. What I went outside to do was take care of my ‘Ruby Beauty’ dwarf raspberries, which were planted together in one container (which is OK, they’re designed for relatively close planting). In 2015 they looked fine; in 2016 not so much. I think I forgot to prune back the fruited canes. So yesterday I pruned out all of the dead wood, transplanted one into a container on its own and repotted the remaining two in the same container, so they’ve got more space and some fresh compost underneath to lift them out of their ‘slump’.
The Lone Raspberry, as it shall now be called, was planted into a container that was already full of potting compost, which had attempted (and failed) to grow a squash last year. (There was no reason to blame the compost.) What I found, on closer inspection, was that it had become home to several self-sown seedlings of Siberian purslane (Claytonia sibirica), a pretty perennial edible leaf.
I moved the seedlings to the edge of the pot, where hopefully they will thrive as a groundcover to the raspberry. Then I went off to check on the mother plant. The mother plant came from the original garden. It hitched a ride with a balloonberry to Malvern, lived there for a couple of years, and then came to the new garden. It’s obviously at home if it’s seeding everywhere, although I don’t recall seeing it flower last year! While I was there I pruned the balloonberries, which are horribly scratchy things.
After that it was on to some general weeding of cracks and crevices around the raised beds, which mainly find themselves host to dandelions and some weird weeds I haven’t identified yet (but which are everywhere, and easy to pull up). This time I found something different –
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