the berries and asparagus get a little attention

The past couple days I have been working on weeding, fertilizing and mulching the raspberry canes, blueberry bushes and the asparagus.  The raspberry canes were transplants that were moved from the edge of the grove to a new spot where hopefully they can be managed to grow bigger berries.  Our are black raspberry canes that start out red and turn black when ripe.  Quite a few of the transplanted canes are getting leaves on them so I am hoping that most of them made it thru the winter.

The asparagus is some that we started from seed last winter and planted outside when the ground warmed up.  We dug a trench and planted the plants in the bottom of it and gradually  added soil to the trench as the plants got taller.  This spring there are one or more spears popping up by nearly every plant.  There were a couple of plants that didn't make it through the summer so we had a couple gaps in the spacing.  I was hoping that they might come back this spring so we will watch for them and if they don't come perhaps replace them with new plants.  I did start more seeds this winter again in case there was a failure over winter.  Now the decision will be whether to share the new plants or start another row.

The blueberries have been a struggle.  We planted them in 2011.  Six plants, two each of three varieties.  We did not plan ahead for them and prepare a spot with acidic soil and so I have been trying to amend the soil around them.  Last year they did not grow and looked sickly, kind of yellow.  We did several things hoping to have both quick and long term changes in the pH.  I was kind of afraid that they might not come up this year.  This year I purchased a pH meter and so far my readings suggest that my blueberry soil is still too alkaline.  All of the plants seem to have come up.  Two of the varieties are doing better than the third.  They are yellow in color but getting little leaves on them so I am going to do a little more research and see if I can find out if that is normal.

I did not get the rhubarb weeded but that is on my list for next week.  This weekend I will be gone watching my youngest receive her Master's Degree in Interior Architecture and Product Design at Kansas State.

As an update the greenhouse is way too warm so once I get back the plants in there are going in the ground.  There is the possibility of rain so I am hoping that if it is cloudy it will stay cooler in there. I am currently trying to get an inventory of the transplants that I have so that I can work on my garden plan while riding in the car.

All of the orchard trees are getting bigger buds and little leaves.  One of the plums has tiny white flowers coming.  The other plum has two different types of wood so I am not sure if that is the way that it is supposed to grow or if there are suckers coming from below the graft.  More research needed...