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[gardening] Mother nature don't care
May. 29th, 2012 07:35 pmJust like honey badger.
This is the first of the long-planned and even -promised series of gardening posts. I'll start off easy (no photos).
One of the things we did this year was plant a set of raspberry bushes. Well, bushes eventually. Right now they're about 3" off the ground. Well, mostly. See, there were some problems with the quality of the compost we planted them into. I don't know if you get the same sort of variation in nutrient content with store-bought compost, but when you get it from the farm by way of a long time sitting in the open with stuff growing on the top layer, some variation is expected. In this case, as the yellowing leaves on our six sad, neglected raspberries told us, there wasn't enough nitrogen in the mix.
Cue slow-release nitrogen tablets near the roots of each. Cue an almost full week of rain.
Remember how I said the (now much healthier and sporting new growth) raspberries were about 3" off the ground? That's five of them. The sixth one grew to over a foot. In a week. Bamboo, you got *nothing* on this baby.
As an aside, did you know that it's only the new growth that fruits on raspberry bushes? Apparently, with at least some of the varieties, the thing to do at the end of every fall is to mow them down to the ground.
Another moment of "mother nature don't care" tomorrow, when the rain stops and I can take a photo.
This is the first of the long-planned and even -promised series of gardening posts. I'll start off easy (no photos).
One of the things we did this year was plant a set of raspberry bushes. Well, bushes eventually. Right now they're about 3" off the ground. Well, mostly. See, there were some problems with the quality of the compost we planted them into. I don't know if you get the same sort of variation in nutrient content with store-bought compost, but when you get it from the farm by way of a long time sitting in the open with stuff growing on the top layer, some variation is expected. In this case, as the yellowing leaves on our six sad, neglected raspberries told us, there wasn't enough nitrogen in the mix.
Cue slow-release nitrogen tablets near the roots of each. Cue an almost full week of rain.
Remember how I said the (now much healthier and sporting new growth) raspberries were about 3" off the ground? That's five of them. The sixth one grew to over a foot. In a week. Bamboo, you got *nothing* on this baby.
As an aside, did you know that it's only the new growth that fruits on raspberry bushes? Apparently, with at least some of the varieties, the thing to do at the end of every fall is to mow them down to the ground.
Another moment of "mother nature don't care" tomorrow, when the rain stops and I can take a photo.