The Demo Garden Blog

We were busy as beavers this past Tuesday in the Demonstration Garden! There was a lot of cleanup to do to get ready to start planting. We also had some other projects, mostly related to our fruit bed.

Here are some pictures of what we did this week:

We raked all the leaves off the strawberries, then thinned the plants out. Strawberries can be their own worst weed. By pulling half of the plants, the remaining plants should have enough space to produce lots of fruit! (These strawberries are 1 year old. They are a day neutral variety called ‘Eversweet.’

We pruned and staked the blackberries and raspberries. This is ‘Chester’ Blackberry, a thornless, semi-trailing variety. Every time a cane of this plant hits the soil it roots and starts a new plant. Hopefully tying them to a stake will help prevent that problem!

We transplanted a black currant, ‘Ben Lomond,’ a red currant, ‘Cascade,’ and a gooseberry, ‘Captivator,’ into the same garden bed where the blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries currently reside. They were in a location that was consistently too wet during the summer, so we decided to move them. Hopefully they will thrive in their new home! The new location also has some light shade, which should help prevent leaf scorch during the heat of mid-summer in south central Kansas.

We started preparing our raised beds for spring planting by digging in some of the great compost that our composters make for us! We try to incorporate compost every spring and fall. Eventually this bed will be home to our Cherry Tomato Trial.

Here a young ‘Concord’ grape has been pruned and tied up to the trellis. These two vines will form the main trunk as the vine gets older. We also pruned the older grapevines.

After all of our pruning and weeding, the compost pile is stacked high with the garden refuse. (The bags were brought in by a composter. We didn’t have that much trash in the garden!) All this will be put through the chipper-shredder and added to one of our compost bins. The compost crew will be busy next week!

The garden is clean and ready for spring planting! The herbs are also starting to grow.