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Green Spaces in Rural Places:

Rounding Up Raspberries

It's raspberry season! I always look forward to the first delectable berries from my garden. Every time I head out there to work, I'll be checking on the progress of the canes.

Early in the spring I'll look for signs of life. I search for the green, having missed it all winter. There will be a few violas blooming (they seem to blossom under the snow). The rhubarb starts crowning. There are green blades of grass here and there (the first green grass is on the edges of the highway, using the warmth of the pavement). The asparagus starts poking up from the mud. And there will be leaves forming on the new raspberry canes.

Raspberries are true biennials. The canes that have fruit this year will die after bearing. The canes that are new this year will give berries next year. The canes are dying even as they produce. They become progressively brittle and break easily while I'm harvesting the ruby-red gems.

There is a lot of work in raising raspberries. Once the canes start budding, I am out there with my clippers, trimming away the old, dead canes. Each clump is trimmed back to 4-6 new canes, the ones that will produce this year. Some clumps are dug out and sold. Others (later) are simply dug out and discarded. I'll have to weed out offshoots all summer. They want to spread out and take over.

After the trimming comes the fertilizing. The fertilizer I'm using now is granular (11-52-0-0). It is what we used to use on our wheat crop (we now use liquid). I assist with the seeding of our wheat crop, helping fill the air seeder with the seed wheat and the fertilizer each spring. There was always some fertilizer left in the auger when we finished, and it used to come trickling back down and fall on the ground. Being a frugal person (my parents and grandparents instilled in me the hard lessons of The Great Depression), I started taking 5-gallon buckets to catch that waste. I still have enough stored for a few more years of gardening. I hand-broadcast it on the entire garden plot once I have my hose system in place, and then water heavily.

An aside on watering: I highly recommend a drip system. I know it's expensive, but it's well worth the cost. It puts the water directly in the rows via emitters spaced every two feet. Water is not wasted between the rows, which helps reduce weeding and saves water. The weeds have to be content with rain, of which there's usually not enough. Since the water is put directly on the ground in the rows, you don't have to worry about the wind, of which we have an abundance.

I have eight long rows on each of my two drip hose systems, so I can turn on the hydrant and have two-thirds of my garden watered at once. I can go off and do other things knowing the water is going where it's needed. I do have three rows that aren't on the drip system. Those rows (strawberries, asparagus, and rhubarb/fruit trees) each have a separate soaker hose. I'm able to quickly attach the water source to them via the quick-connecters purchased through the local hardware store (which is where I also bought the soaker hoses). My raspberry rows have two drip hoses down each, as raspberries want lots of water.

There will be lots of bees working the blossoms on the canes throughout late May and June. I also plant flowers in my garden, and let the volunteer flowers run riot between the rows to draw the bees in. Those bees do the necessary pollinating of the raspberry blossoms, as well as all the other plants.

Around the first of July I'll start seeing hints of color on the developing berries. By the middle of the month there will be a handful to munch on as a reward for tending the garden. Those go straight from the canes to my stomach. By the third week of July I'm picking berries every day, lots of berries.

 I freeze lots of berries for use in the winter. I rinse them, lay them in a single layer on a jelly roll pan (the edges keep them from rolling off), freeze, and vacuum seal once they're solid. If you try to vacuum seal without freezing first, you get a bag of raspberry mush. A friend told me you can gently spin them in a salad spinner lined with paper towels to remove more water from them. I tried, and it worked well.

If you just want to eat them fresh, and keep them in the fridge longer, rinse them in a solution of 10 parts water to one part vinegar. The vinegar will kill the bacteria that helps cause mold. The solution is weak enough that you won't taste the vinegar on the berries. I use this with all my berries, both home-grown and store-bought.

The past couple of years I've sold my excess berries to Reynold's in Glasgow. I'll take in Monday and Tuesday's pickings Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday's pickings go in Thursday afternoon. Friday and Saturday's pickings go in my freezer. Sunday I don't pick. I do keep enough to eat fresh all days!

Picking raspberries is hard work. There's a lot of bending over so I wear a back brace. There are thorns and stickers, so I wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. And it's usually hot, so I try to get out there in the cool of the morning, but that doesn't always happen (due to farm emergencies for which my assistance is needed). I've also cut the fingertips off an old pair of gardening gloves for berry picking. Those save my hands from looking like I've been attacked by a kitten. Each berry has to be individually picked and gently placed in the container. The containers have to be shallow to avoid crushing those on the bottom. Don't ever complain about the price. There's just no way to mechanize the harvest.

By the end of the raspberry season (mine produce for five to six weeks) I'm thoroughly sick of picking them. I do have a few select friends I'll allow to come pick for their use, to give myself a break. But I never get sick of eating the berries. The frozen ones go on my french toast (with powdered sugar) every Sunday morning. Some go on frozen yogurt (with or without chocolate sauce). The juice (there's always juice when you thaw them) goes in lemonade or iced tea (or even hot tea). I don't care for raspberry jam, so I don't make that. Fresh berries are fantastic with brownies and whipped cream, or added to yogurt, either regular or Greek. There's lots of ways to have raspberries.

I think I'll go pick some more...

 

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