I took full advantage of the weather today (sunny, hi in the mid 40s) to get some things done in the garden that really needed to be done.

The grape vines I purchased from Miller Nurseries came in the mail this week. Candace and Reliance went into the ground at the edge of the strawberry bed. I’ll build a trellis of 3 tbars and some wire later in the year. Himrod went into a 3 gallon pot till I get the spot I want to put it in dealt with. Right now it is under a pile of leaves. My plan is to train it along 1/1 of a long side of the fence that surrounds my bean/lettuce bed.

Since I had SO many raspberries (stopped counting at 100+) come up last spring from the 6 plants I planted the year before, I decided to prune them for a spring crop hoping that they would tax the root system a bit and slow down the production of new canes. I cut all of the canes in the 3′ x 12-15′ bed down to about 12-18″. They already have new shoots coming out. These should give me some berries in July. Plot 2 consists of 6 plants I planted in a 15′ area last spring. This was of course before the 100+ plants came up. I went ahead and cut them back to the ground a month or so ago for a fall crop that should start bearing in Aug and go till frost with no problem. This year I plan to thin them out MUCH more than I did last spring. We were knee deep in berries before the first hard frost hit.