The Compost Bin

My pest control motto for berries has always been to stop worrying about the birds, chipmunks and squirrels that are eating some of the berries and just keep planting more of them. Eventually there will be enough for everyone.

This year that might actually be true.


Blackberries


Strawberries


Blueberries

I think that over the winter all of the wildlife in my yard got together, had a few meetings, and they have declared war on my garden. Here's one of their agents of evil stealing a strawberry.

Well listen here wildlife, you know how I had the yard certified as a Natural Wildlife Habitat all those years ago? Well if you keep eating all of my food, I'm going to have it un-certified. No more food, water and shelter for you greedy little critters.

Seriously, I think this year's vegetable garden is going to consist of nothing but peppers and tomatoes. The latest victim was a bed full of kohlrabi. Thankfully, none of the little creatures have messed with the peppers and tomatoes. But I had better keep a close eye on them.

Spring is finally in full bloom and I've got flowers or at least buds all over my yard. These flowers in the picture are going to grow up to become strawberries one day soon. Go ahead and ask them what they want to be when they grow up. I'm sure they'll tell you that they want to be strawberries.

You've got to love how our gardens come through for us every spring. I recently asked my six year old son what he wanted to be when he grew up and he asked me if it was okay if he did nothing.

Now my son may not have all the answers yet but he's a lot funnier than a strawberry plant.

One thing that’s on my garden to do list is to get rid of my blackberries. Look at this giant tangled mess. To give you an idea of how big this plant is, the raised bed that these blackberries have completely taken over is 12 feet wide by 3 feet deep.

Besides being out of control, another reason why I want to get rid of them is the thorns. My whole family loves eating them but the thorns are usually responsible for one of my kids crying every time we pick some berries. They go right through my thickest gloves too. Cutting this plant down will be no picnic.

And the last strike against this blackberry is that it’s sending runners all over my garden. I’ve got blackberry canes popping up in the nearby raised beds and I’m tired of pulling them out. As I said the thorns stick me right through my gloves. Ouch!

I’m going to cut and dig out everything that I can in the raised bed. And then when new runners continue to pop up all around the garden, instead of pulling them out, I’ve got another plan. I’m going to make a paste of salt and vinegar. Then I'll cut the invading cane and apply the paste to the wound. I’m hopping this will kill the runner back to the source. It may not work but short of digging up my entire garden, this is the best idea I came up with. Obviously I'm not going to spray something like Roundup in my vegetable garden.

The last step in this blackberry removal project is to buy some more blackberries. I’m thinking about going with a Prime Jim from Stark Brothers. This thornless variety produces fruit on first year canes and it sounds great to me. As I said, my family loves fresh blackberries every summer so who am I to let them down.

Here's some shots of my strawberry plants trying to take over an entire 4'x4' raised bed. I was hoping that they would do exactly that so I very happy to see the plants sending out tons of runners. I guess they liked the compost rich soil that I planted them in.

You can never have enough strawberries.

There are blackberry canes popping up all over my garden. Some of these things are about 10 feet away from the raised bed that the plant is in and some are even invading my other beds.

One runner even decided to spring up in the middle of my red onions. That's just not right. Come on, leave a man's red onions alone. Since the main plant is very close to my fence, my neighbor totally must have some in his yard now too. Ooops.

I was going to add, "Build root barrier" to my list of things that I don't have time to do but after some research, I've found out that blackberry runners can go down a meter deep. Yikes!

I really must get these new strawberry plants in the ground. They're producing berries even though they're sitting on my patio in the peat pots that I bought them in. I'm not complaining and in fact I'm very happy that they aren't dried up and dead due to neglect. I really must invent a way to get 40 hours of gardening done in my free time.

Berries are very popular in my yard. Between the usual garden pests (birds, squirrels, etc) and my two kids (yes, I'm comparing my kids to pests), I don't get to eat too many berries even though I grow tons of them. Although, lately my defense for dealing with the berry eaters is to plant more and more berry plants.

I'm pretty sure that I want to plant these strawberries in the ground and not in a raised bed or a planter. This way the runners have solid ground to run to and in a few years if all goes well, I'll have a gigantic strawberry patch. Maybe I'll even get to eat one or two.

Just like most other plants, strawberries seem to like rich soil amended with compost. I know I sound like a broken record with the compost but this is the Compost Bin after all. If I ever talk about growing grapes, I'll skip the compost advice. My father, who planted a couple of hundred grape vines on his property tells me this anyway. And he's also figured out how to get 40 hours of gardening done in his free time. It's called retirement.

I've only been growing blackberries for 4 years now. It started when I bought a cardboard package from a big box store with delicious looking berries pictured all over it. I remember bringing the package to the register and thinking about blackberry pie and blackberry jam. I even thought about buying some lumber and steel cable to build a proper trellis. But I passed on the heavy gear and happily paid for my new plant in a box.

To my surprise, when I opened the box, the plant looked like a stick. It was pretty late in the season but I put it in the ground anyway. This jam might take a few years to make, but I was patient. By the time the fall came, the stick had turned into a 1 foot plant with green leaves on it.

The following spring, the bush got bigger and greener but still no berries. I was still fine with that because I knew that berries only grew on 2nd year canes. Since I planted it so late in the previous season, I guessed that I wouldn't get any berries again. And I was right. But when autumn came around, I had a healthy looking bush that was spreading nicely.

Last year, with the blackberry jungle completely filling a raised bed that was 3 feet wide and 12 feet long, my family gorged ourselves with delicious blackberries. They never even made it back to the house. Each night, after work, my children and I would go up to the garden and pick and eat blackberries. And after days of returning back to the house empty handed, my wife started joining us for our evening berry feast too. These were good times.

So what will this year bring? I think it's safe to say that there will be more feasts. Still not sure about the jam but with last year's canes around 6 feet tall and the huge number of flowers out there already, we'll definitely have enough berries for it.

One of the best plant purchases that I've made in the past few years was buying these blueberry bushes. I've had berries every year since buying them except when I had to do an emergency transplant to their current location because of my pool renovation. And since then, they recovered nicely and are very productive once again.

And when blueberry plants flower up like this in the spring, that means that berries are on the way. Sure, we won't be eating them for a few months but just knowing that they're on the way is nice.

When the berries do arrive this summer, I plan on getting my share. My kids are notorious for swooping in and eating all the berries before anyone else gets any. I've found that the best solution to that problem is to plant more berries. My latest totals are 5 blueberry plants, 6 strawberry plants and the blackberries are 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide. I think I should be able to eat a berry or two this year. Wish me luck.

Definitely in need of some pruning.

The birds and squirrels in my yard are notorious for eating all of my blueberries, blackberries and strawberries before I even get a chance to decide whether I’m going to use them to make pancakes or muffins. And so far, despite putting it pretty high on my to do list, I still haven’t built any berry cages or put any bird netting around my plants. My only defense over the years has been to grow more and more and that strategy is finally working

So for first time in ages, I was looking forward to the chance to enjoy some fresh picked berries. But before the pancake griddle had a chance to heat up, the berries were gone. Once again my berry supply was decimated but this time, the birds and squirrels weren’t guilty. This time it was two brand new pests and their voracious appetites made the birds and squirrels seem like… well, birds and squirrels. They didn’t stop their daily feeding frenzy until the blueberries bushes were bare, the blackberry brambles were stripped clean and the strawberries plants were completely wiped out.

Normally I would be pretty upset but I don’t mind because these new pests were my kids. My 5 year old son and his 3 year old sister have made berry picking (and eating) a daily ritual for the past few weeks. We would bring a basket or a bag up to the garden to pick the berries but none of them ever made it back into the house. My son has become a pro at contorting his body and avoiding thorns to get the ripest blackberries and my daughter is close to having a permanent berry stain from her chin to her nose.

So if you are a berry grower, I advise using extreme caution. With my berries mostly gone, my kids may look to your yards and gardens for their next feast.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this variety before, but I have what's known as Magic Strawberries.

I bought them as seedlings and they grew into these healthy strong plants that send out lots of runners and flower all the time. The flowers turn into beautiful looking small green strawberries and then, this is the magic part, they disappear never to be seen again.

On the plant label it says:

"Magic Strawberries are guaranteed to get you anxious to eat delicious, home grown, ripe strawberries but then, through a unique and patented process, the green strawberries just disapear. Great gift for gardeners who like practical jokes."

I think that patented process has something to do with these hungry little guys.



Oh well, when all else fails, there are always U-Pick Strawberry Farms that aren't too far away. Their strawberries are always ripe, delicious and magic free.

My giant mess of a blackberry plant is actually starting to ripen.

The green blackberries that have been taunting me since last month are finally beginning to turn red. But they aren't called red-berries, so I'll continue waiting until they ripen to a delicious black color.

I have an interesting plan for these blackberries beside eating them right off the bush and the usual jams and pies. I want to give a bucketful to my Dad so that he can make some blackberry wine. He makes some mean Elderberry Wine and his Dandelion Wine is world class. I definitely want to see what he can do with my blackberries.

Besides Blackberries, it also looks like I’ll have a good amount of blueberries this year. Last year I only had one blueberry and a bird ate it before it turned blue. That’s not what I’d call a successful harvest.

I grew up loving blueberries and would never turn down a slice of homemade blueberry pie. In fact, I wouldn't turn down the less homemade Hostess variety either. My grandparents had a lake house up in the country and I remember picking buckets full of blueberries each summer. And that was using the “one for the bucket, two for me, one more for the bucket, three for me” method of picking. We'd even take the row boat and pick the wild blueberries that would grow around the lake.

So when I bought my house I made sure that I planted my own bushes. I've had blueberry bushes on my property for the last 7 years now. They were well established large bushes until last year when I had to transplant them because of pool/landscaping renovations.

But it looks like they're getting comfortable in their new home, a raised bed in my vegetable garden. As long as I can get out there and put a net over my plants in the next couple of weeks, my family should have it's fill of blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes, blueberry pie and maybe even enough for my father to make some blueberry wine.

Does anyone have a good recipe for blackberry jam? I think I'll have a few extra blackberries this year and I might have to make some jam.

I haven’t written much about blueberries this year because as you can see from the post title, I was only able to grow one!

My 4 blueberry plants are about 4 years old and are usually full of blueberries every summer. I pick enough for some blueberry muffins and pancakes and then the birds eat the rest. I’d love to set up some netting so that there would be enough fruit to make jam or something but that’s on my ever growing to-do list of chores. Until I find some time to do that, I don’t mind sharing with the birds.

This year the blueberry plants had to be transplanted because there’s now a stacked stone retaining wall where the blueberries used to be. The wall looks great but it doesn’t improve the taste of my pancakes at all.

So the blueberry bushes are in a bed in my raised vegetable garden now. They really didn’t like the move and barely grew at all this year. But towards the end of summer they adjusted and starting showing some new growth. I should be back in business next year. So in my garden journal, I’ve marked 2006 as the Year of the Lone Blueberry.

You know, when I bought these strawberry plants, I thought I might be able to eat at least one strawberry this summer. Well it turns out that probably won't be the case. Sure they're growing great and as you can see, the flowers are having no problem setting fruit. It's just that the squirrels are beating me to them. They don't even wait until the strawberries turn red. This green one in the picture was gone when I woke up this morning. No fair!!!

I bought three alpine strawberry plants this year and planted them in a stone planter that the previous owners of my house used as some sort of water garden. The stone looked great but the rusty metal bin with odd looking underwater lightbulb housing turned it into an oddity. The electrical line that powered this monstrosity didn't work anymore and was buried underneath a concrete patio. So something had to be done to make it look a little nicer.

After filling it with sand and adding some river rocks it then became a zen garden complete with some small wooden hand rakes that I bought at the dollar store. I had visions of sitting outside and raking nice tracks in the sand like a monk. Definitely much nicer than the mess that preceeded it. But the zen garden didn't last long because the rain turned it back into a water garden or actually a mud garden.

Then after a brief stint as a stick garden, we now have strawberries growing there. The sand underneath the 4 inches of compost that I added provides decent drainage so the zen garden wasn't a complete waste. The monks would be proud.

Yikes, those sticks that I put in the ground last year have turned into Blackberries. I'm a big fan of the Blackberry so I picked up one of those boxes from Costco that had 2 Raspberry and 2 Blackberries in it. It sat around for a month or two before I got it into the ground. I figured it was too late at that point and cursed my garden procrastination (always too much to do). But at the end of the season one blackberry plant had a couple of green leaves on it.

This year is a different story. These cane are shooting up all over the place. Since berries only grow on old wood, I'm already excited about next year's berries.

But I must build a trellis quickly before the thing is crawling on the ground and into my neighbors yard.