An Update and the Fruit Garden

I'm getting so behind in my postings, so I suppose I'll do a little catch up today and again tomorrow. First I spent another two hours working on my perennial border edging today. It is almost done. It just needs a little touch up near my Daphne where the two kinds of borders come together. I've run out of good rocks, but I'll get more in a couple of weeks when I finish up preparing the vegetable garden.

Sunday, yes a couple of days ago, I pruned my fruit garden. So not only am I behind in posting, but they should have been pruned in March, before I started seeing any growth. The raspberries has some broken canes as usual and a few tiny canes. I took them out. There isn't any other pruning to do for the raspberries in the spring. I have everbearers and the major pruning comes right after the first fruiting is over. Everbearers aren't really everbearing. They bear twice a year. Once in the summer and once in the fall.

The other fruit in my fruit garden are my blueberry plants. I have four old ones that aren't really producing anymore. They are still there. They got a huge pruning last year and got another one this year. The last of the old wood will be removed next year. I'm hoping that will start them bearing again, but I'm not counting on it. Last year I put in six new plants. Their location isn't ideal. They are along the driveway which means in the winter they get snow shoveled on them. Usually this is not an issue, but this year with the massive amounts of snow we got they were not happy. There were many broken limbs. I did the best I could cutting out the broken bits, often whole limbs. Most of the blueberries have only three stems now. I'm counting on new growth this year.

The one other plant in my fruit garden is a rose. I pruned it a bit too, but I really don't know anything about pruning roses. Most years the rose dies back almost all the way so I just prune out any dead wood, but this year there was no die back at all. I took off the rose hips and evened out the bush. I keep my rose bush in the fruit garden because it make rose hips so it seems like an appropriate place for it. I don't use the hips, but they are pretty during the winter.