Garden Timeline – Pruning Raspberries

We have been wondering whether, when, and how to prune our raspberries.

We want to ensure that our patch remains healthy and will produce next year.  We also want to cull the herd a little as they are running a little out of control.  After a little research, here’s what I found.

First thing, there are two kinds of canes–the first year canes, that don’t produce fruit, and the second year canes.  These are the producers.  I guess there are a couple other kinds as well–third year and beyond–these I guess just need to be pruned off, and dead ones that definitely need to be removed.

For the living, you need to prune in late winter or early spring.

So you have to identify the new and old ones.  I did not find much information as to how to make this distinction other than somehow remembering which produced fruit and which did not.  But, this says to look for ones with “grayish peeling bark”  Cutting the canes involves trimming them down to about four inches from the ground.

Then you need to trim back the suckers.  These are smaller canes that seem to be a result of an attempt by the plants to spread.

Other things we need to do:

• tie the canes up to some string, or maybe to the fence
• try to limit the number of plants and get them into some kind of orderly row

Pruning seems to be important and should allow for new plants to come up.  Its also a good way to prevent disease.

Wireless and CAT5

One of the things our electrician mentioned when we discussed putting in new outlets, was the possibility of running CAT 5, or ethernet, cable through the house as he was running the other wires.  To hook up new outlets he would have to run wires out of the circuit breaker box in the basement, up through a pipechase or some other crevice, into the attic, and then back down into the upstairs walls.

It seems an awfully long way to go to to get an outlet upstairs, but I suppose it makes sense.  And while you are doing it, it seems to make sense to run any other wires you need or might need, at the same time.

But we have wireless, and it seems to work pretty well throughout the house.  So why bother with cabling?

Well, we may want to finish the attic someday (it is one of our big plans), so perhaps it would help bring internet to our attic. So that might be one argument.  Are there others?  Are there any good reasons to wire your house for internet if you already have reasonably effective wireless?

Poison Ivy Plan

[this post is slightly out of order, but I want to get it out there] I’m figuring on a plan of attack for the two areas of poison ivy in the yard.  This means starting with permission and preventive barriers and ending with appropriate disposal and cleanup.  Here’s a rough bulleted list.

• First I need to talk to my neighbors and get access to their yards to take care of this nasty.
• Get Ivy Block or some other pi barrier.
• Get Tecnu or some other product for cleanup.
• Trash bags
• Stock up on either regular vinegar or concentrated vinegar.
• Lay out protective gear, including long sleeves and long pants–preferably something I wouldn’t mind throwing out after.

Preparation.

• Slather myself in Ivy Block, which can be thought of as similar  to sunblock.  It supposedly prevents urushiol, the active ingredient in poison ivy (as well as poison oak, poison sumac, and cashews) from getting to your skin.
• Don the protective clothing, including rubber gloves, to keep the ivy from the skin.
• Tools: clippers, plastic bags for containing the clippings, homemade organic ivy-cide, boiling water

In Action

• Get out there and carefully, thoroughly remove the existing plant, clipping and bagging until there is only root.
• Pull as much of the root as is possible, while leaving some visible.
• In the hedge I want to expose the root so that any new sprouts will be visible.
• In the other location, where there are no other plants nearby, I’ll pour in boiling water at least, and probably the vinegar too.

Disposal and Cleanup

• After bagging it I’ll double bag to make sure there is no urushiol on the outside of the bag.
• Wash the clippers with Tecnu
• Remove protective clothing and wash with Tecnu.
• wash skin with Tecnu (it better work!).

Followup

• Watch watch watch for any return from the plant.

catchup

It’s been an age since I wrote anything here, so here’s a brain dump post to get things going a bit.

- I spent an hour or two the other day pulling seed pods off of the black swallowwort, which I had previously thought was bindweed.  Its an invasive vine that grows all over our yard.  The more mature vines along some of our fences, and in our hedge have developed good size seed pods, some of which are starting to burst.  When they burst, the pods show the plants relation to milkweed, and release little cottony seeds that travel on the wind.  I wanted to get the pods before they released their cargo.  Picked a plastic shopping bag full of them.  I think that this effort, along with frequent pulling of the vines as they come up, will pay off eventually.

- When I was battling the swallowwort I found some more poison ivy plants (only after I was close enough to have touched them).

- Speaking of Poison Ivy, I bought some Ivy Block and some Tecnu on Monday.  Thankfully I had the Tecnu when I needed it (I hope it works).

- Last week we finally got the shelves up in Wifey’s office.  One of the brackets started to pull out already so I have to get back in there with the stud-finder.  Maybe its a lesson I can apply when I put up my own shelves.

- This organic gardening supply site looks awesome! I can’t wait to get their catalog and pore through it in the winter months.

Garden Timeline – August Week 4

Our pear tomatoes are starting to produce a bit–some nice little yellow fruits.  I’m not sure they are in the best spot though,  or maybe they didn’t appreciate the move, because they seem not to be all that prolific.

The bindweed’s seedpods are becoming plentiful and a few are just starting to burst open and release milkweed-like seeds.  Yesterday I started going around to all the fences and ‘harvesting’ these.  I want to keep the seeds from spreading at all if I can. Its fun because it feels like a harvest too.  I wish I had a few kids I could pay to fill up buckets with these.

I’m seeing dandelions in seed as well, and trying to grab those before they propagate.

The poison ivy in the driveway hedge has started into its fall colors.  All the better to identify you with my dear.

The Black Cherry in the park nearby has dropped a load of fruit on the pavement, causing me to wonder if I would leave black cherry juice footprints after walking through them.  The blackcherry that hangs over our back yard dropped its fruit a few weeks ago.

It has gotten dry again, unlike early August where it rained nearly every day, so we are back to watering, and need another soaker hose.

The yellow and pink flowers (as yet unidentified) in front of our house are still going, though the yellow are showing some signs of flagging.  The hydrangeas are still working it as well.

Weeding continues apace.  Formulating a plan to get the poison ivy.  Its pretty much set now.  I realized that I have to get into the raspberry patch to work on an understory of bindweed, and worse, stinging nettles.  Oy.