It's a gorgeous day, here in my garden in South Hobart.
What better way to celebrate the sunshine
than to get my raspberry patch in order before summer hits?
There's something super luxurious
about growing all your own berries at home.
Frida and I love stuffing our faces full of currants, boysenberries
and raspberries in particular.
Sure, we could just go buy heaps from the shop,
but nothing beats that punchy, sweet, gorgeous flavour
of raspberries straight off the bush.
I'm prepping this garden bed to be my new raspberry patch.
It's in full sun.
I've got some manure and compost in that soil.
The bed's been mounded because raspberries like good drainage.
Plus, I'm experimenting with jute mat,
which I'll tell you about later on.
I'm really excited to get my new raspberry plants into the ground.
These are a summer of fruiting variety called Chilcotin.
They've come bare rooted,
so it's really important I get them into the ground
before the weather warms up.
I've got 20 of these beauties to go in
and once they're established,
this new raspberry patch will be bursting with fruit.
Plus, I also have some old raspberry canes,
which I can transplant as well.
My old raspberry patch isn't looking so great these days.
It's really hard to get in there
and manage all the weeds in between the prickly canes,
so when I move some of these old canes,
I'll be happy to leave all those weeds behind.
Because this patch has last season's growth in it as well,
it's the perfect opportunity to talk about raspberry maintenance.
The first thing you should know
is do you have a summer or autumn fruiting variety?
And not just so you know when you get to eat all the good stuff,
but so you know how to manage and prune them.
Here, I've only grown summer fruiting varieties,
so we'll focus on those first.
Each cane only bares fruit once and then it dies off.
That's the time to prune it.
But some of the canes, like these ones,
haven't had a chance to fruit yet.
They shot up at the end of last summer
and have been waiting while the plant's been in dormancy
for their time to shine.
These are the ones I want to keep.
When they're dormant, they can all look very, very similar.
Luckily, there are a few ways you can tell which is which.
you can do the scratch test.
Just scratch the top layer of the cane
to check what colour it is.
These ones are brown and dead-looking,
while these ones have fresh green underneath,
meaning they'll bear this summer's fruit.
Or you can group them together,
like I did with these canes last season,
well before they were fruiting,
just as they were coming into bud and leaf.
Now all I have to do is snip them off at the base,
and there's no way they can get mixed up
with the fresh new growth coming on.
Now, these young canes haven't fruited yet,
and they're just coming into leaf.
It's the perfect time to plait them.
Just like you're putting your own hair or somebody else's hair.
Pop them into three groups and plait them together.
Lovingly wrangle them into submission.
(LAUGHS)
This is actually my favourite method of managing raspberries,
because once they are plaited,
you don't have to have any weird, elaborate trellising
to keep them upright.
If you've got an autumn fruiting variety,
remember, it won't fruit on last season's canes.
It sends up fresh growth every spring and will fruit on that same growth,
meaning that at the end of the season in wintertime,
you can cut the whole lot back down to the ground
and it'll start again.
I'm just picking a few plants that look easy to move.
They're still mostly dormant from winter,
so they'll transplant to our new bed really well.
I want to start using this garden bed for other things,
so eventually, all these raspberries will go.
But for now, I'm going to leave some of these plants here
so I can enjoy one last abundant summer from them.
To make sure this new patch doesn't get overrun by weeds,
I'm experimenting with some jute mat.
The idea is to stop weeds getting sunlight
and popping up all over the place.
The matting will also keep moisture in the ground,
which is really helpful, 'cause raspberries are thirsty.
And instead of jute,
you could also just use old cardboard boxes, flattened out,
with a thick layer of mulch on top.
I'm cutting a clear line into the jute mat
that I can easily plant into.
Having this space open also allows next season's suckers
to pop up easily.
I'm going to be spacing these Chilcotins around 30cm apart.
I'm going to put my transplant raspberries in first.
They are going to love their new and improved home.
Simply dig down into that soft earth that you've already prepared,
making sure you get all the roots all the way in,
and pack in that soil nice and firmly around them
to give them some good support.
I'm putting in a big woodchip moat all around the raspberry bed
for two main reasons.
The first is I want to keep all the grass out of the bed,
and the second I want to keep the raspberry canes in there
because they'll sucker everywhere if I let them.
I've added the posts and wire in between them,
so I can net them over summertime to keep the birds off the fruit
and tie the plaited canes to the bottom wire,
so they don't get too unwieldy.
I am so pumped for my new raspberry home.
With the weeds under control with this jute mat,
the soil prepared just right,
these raspberries are going to go off in the best kind of way.
However, for this coming summer,
we'll still be relying on our old raspberry patch
to give us fresh berries.
But the following summer,
this bed will be pumping out amazing, glorious raspberry joy.