Starting Over

Life is full of do-overs, or times when you wish you could do-over, and gardening is no exception.  There is the occasional plant that turns out to be disappointing or dead once the winter has gotten to it.  There are plants that just show up in my garden that I didn't put there, remnants of a former life...for instance the Shasta daisies.  Around here, Shasta daisies are an invasive species, no kidding.  I thought I could control them but, they were voracious and I had to pull them all out before they took over the entire flower garden.

And then there are the things that just don't turn out the way you had planned.  The latest, for me, were my raspberries.  They are my favorite berry and I really look forward to first ripe ones eaten right off the cane.  Unfortunately, the type that I planted here turned out to be a rather late ripening variety.  In my defense, I ordered a different kind but these were substituted by the nursery (it was an online order) because the ones I wanted were all sold out.  I figured that would be okay and that they probably knew what they were doing.  Now, I'm not so sure.  

The problem with a late ripening raspberry here is that we have a rather short growing season compared to many other places and these berries often did not get ripe until late August or early September.  Our first freeze is often mid to late September which means a very short raspberry season.  Not good.  So I made the decision to dig out the raspberry patch and start over.  This was no small feat.  I agonized about this decision over the winter.  It's hard for a gardener to pull out a perfectly good plant but I finally decided that having a longer raspberry season was more important.  

About a month ago, I dug out the old canes and cleaned up the bed.  This week we added some compost to the soil and I worked it in to give the new berries a nice place to grow.  Today the new raspberry canes went in.  This time, instead of ordering plants from somewhere, I got starts from my friends Diane and Michael who live over in Potlatch, about 8 miles away.  Diane doesn't know the name of this variety.  Her starts were given to her by another local.  She calls them "Prolific Potlatch" raspberries.  I figure these are all good omens that my raspberry bed will produce some really yummy berries.  Thank goodness for do-overs!