Grow Berries In Your Back Yard!

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Remember, too, not to set your plants too deeply (see Fig. 1), and try not to allow weeds to invade your strawberry patch. (It helps to keep the soil around the plants loose and open, and to apply a mulch.) Also, make sure your plants get plenty of sun.

Properly cared for, your strawberry mound (or barrel, as the case may be) should supply you with juicy, tart, vitamin-C-rich fruit for three or four years, or longer.

BACKYARD RASPBERRIES

Raspberries come in several colors—red, black, purple, and yellow—but of the four main types, the red raspberry commands my loyalty for its tangy, fruity flavor and its productiveness. (Note: 1 don't know why, especially since yellow and red raspberries seem compatible, but black and red varieties don't grow well in each other's presence.)

When selecting raspberries from nurseries and catalogs, you'll find some described as "summer-bearing", others listed as "fall-bearing", and still others called "everbearing". The term "everbearing", however, is a little misleading when applied to raspberries, since it's used to describe a plant that crops at two distinct times: once in early summer, and again in the fall. Of the new everbearers, a variety known as Heritage is particularly noteworthy for its ability to produce a moderate crop of large, red berries on old canes in the summer, then a heavier yield on new canes in the fall.

As with all types of "bramble fruit", raspberries are best planted in the fall. When you receive your rootstocks from the nursery (see the sidebar at the end of this article for a list of suppliers), set them in fertile earth that's been enriched with garden compost, leaf mold, or well-rotted manure, and keep the soil thoroughly cultivated for the first few months after the planting.

You'll find that raspberries produce many "suckers" (that is, new canes arising from the base of the parent plant). A certain number of these are necessary for the plant's proper development, but for maximum yields it's advisable—every fall, after the cropping season has ended—to prune all but six or eight canes (per plant) to within an inch of the soil line. (Those canes that you do leave should be trimmed back to 30" in height. See Fig. 2.)

BLACKBERRIES: BETTER "TAMED" THAN WILD!

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