Grass is Growing Tall - Day 134 - Daily Haiku, and Ruminations on our Thornless Blackberries and Native Raspberries

Grass is growing tall
Weeds are taller still, and yet
too rainy to mow

I took this photo of one of our resident deer a few years back, but this is pretty much what our weeds were starting to look like, up until a couple of days ago, with our alternately very hot and very wet spring weather.

This haiku was written right before the massive storms that came through here a couple of days ago, but happily it dried out enough for me to mow for a few hours yesterday, and another couple of hours today, so while there are still a few tall patches, the majority of the grass is at a reasonable height again around the main house.

I still have a fair amount left to mow, especially the clearing by the studio and in the barnyard, but the rain is supposed to hit again come tomorrow morning, so my window for mowing was relatively small, as it has been all spring. I'm grateful to have gotten as much done as I have.

Tomorrow I'm planning to dig out fifteen or so small volunteer black raspberry plants, that are growing in a clump a few feet in front of where I usually park, so that I can transplant them nearer the front of the property, where I can train them into a living fence.

I am hoping that their fruit will be even sweeter, growing in full sun, and that the resulting fence will at least be deer-resistant, though it may take two seasons to reach that height. Then again, they are really taking off right now, and if it remains hot and wet for a while longer, they may well reach full height this year. Time will tell.

These are the native black raspberries, daughter plants to the large one that started underneath our front porch, which produce berries that are tiny but prolific, usually abut a quarter inch across or thereabouts, and they are absolutely delicious.

We got nearly a quart of berries last season from the one main plant, which is heavily shaded for most of the day, so I am hopeful that we will have a bumper crop each year once these young plants com into full production, grown in full sun.

I am also hoping to propagate many more this year, so that I can ring the barnyard fence with them, and once I determine the best tasting and most productive plants, I'll be cloning them to improve the overall quality of our fruit, and to sell starter plants at the local farmer's markets.

By far the best crops we've gotten for the past couple of years (apart from native black walnuts and hickory nuts), have been from our thornless blackberries and our volunteer native black raspberries. They bloom late enough that they are unaffected by frost, unlike our fruit trees, which got completely zapped this year by a late frost; and I've yet to spot any immature fruit set as yet on our fruit trees, whereas our blackberries and native raspberries are loaded. Sigh.

Our blackberries, especially, have gone through insane growth for the past couple of years . . . I originally planted three plants, of two different varieties, and over time they have grown into a thicket roughly eight feet wide and close to twenty feet long, which is all but completely impassable.

This fall I plan to remove all the dead canes, weed thoroughly, and transplant the volunteer plants as needed, to bring some order to the chaos. I literally can't even reach the berries in the middle of the thicket, which gives our local birds quite a feast; blackberries, like raspberries, put down roots and start a new plant every time a cane tip touches the ground, which is frequent.

I don't know how many plants there are now, but it's a whole lot more than the three plants I originally planted. Even without being able to reach a high percentage of the berries, I harvested well over four gallons of blackberries last year, and they are huge and very sweet. And I still have a gallon left over from 2016.

Two of the thornless blackberries are Navajo, which is a patented named variety, and I believe that the third one is Arapaho, but I'm not certain of that one. Somewhere around I still have my original plan of the orchard and fruiting bushes, and that will tell me the varieties for certain.

Interestingly, we planted six raspberry bushes at the same time we planted the first two thornless blackberries, but none of the named raspberries ever did much, and at this point, only two still survive.

Though this year, with all the rain, they are looking better than they ever have, so maybe we'll finally get a crop from them. Again, time will tell.

And of course, we also have LOTS of native blackberries and black raspberries throughout our woods, which again are ridiculously prolific, everywhere, and frequently impassable!

If you have access to native raspberries, be sure to collect plenty of the leaves, as they make a wonderful tea, which is delicious, nutritious and medicinal as well. It is especially high in Vitamin C.

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Some of my recent posts:

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Jeff Buckley Lives On - Day 133 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning Part 6, with additional info and another haiku
First There Was Grace - Day 132 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning Part 5
Growing Up in a Fog – Original Poetry
Jeff Buckley's Music - Day 131 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning, Part 4 - Humor and Running Theme
Jeff Buckley's Music - Day 130 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning, Part 3
Jeff Buckley's Music - Day 129 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning, Part 2
Jeff Buckley's Music - Day 128 - Daily Haiku - Grace for Drowning, Part 1
Laughter is the Best - Day 127 - Daily Haiku - and even more Comic Gems
Lovely Hummingbirds - Day 126 - Daily Haiku
Most Charitable Poetry Contest #1 - Speaking My Truth - Original Poetry
Nashville at Nighttime - Day 125 - Daily Haiku

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