BWW Project #21 Raspberry Corral

 BWW Project #21 -- Raspberry Corral

Garden work for me only if it's bull-work.  Unfortunately another bull-work project came up.  Raspberry bushes are invasive and if you don't want them to take over your whole flower garden and that of your neighbors, they have to be corralled.  That's where the bull comes in.

We have wonderful, thornless raspberries at the community garden, some of which will need to come here to the back yard.  Cathy designated a spot and I began to dig a perimeter to bury a roll of plastic weedstop shown below:

It's 18-inches deep and here is where the bullwork starts!  We measured a perimeter that will use the entire roll.  15-feet, I think.  Then I dug a trench as deep as I could with the shovel:

The rubber met the road when I dug about a foot deep trench, encountering all kinds of old tree roots from some dogwoods that apparently were planted here, got old, died, and were cut down to stumps.  It was grueling.

When I got it all done, we needed 8 more inches of depth.  I finally stumbled upon the answer.  A full sized crow bar!  I was able to punch down through gravel, loosen everything up, and scoop it out with a garden scooper.  I encountered roots, which I could nip off with the limb-nippers, and rocks, which I could pry loose.  One rock was half the size of a bowling ball and was hellacious to dig out, but after an afternoon of hell, I had the trench deep enough.

We put the plastic weedstop in and...

Viola!  A raspberry corral!  Now just to backfill the outside and plant the plants!  Hopefully not too much more bullwork in the garden.  I have a list of 35 other projects to do.