We learned a lot from last year’s planting and had a much more efficient system going this year, when we planted our second “batch” of blackberries. We knew the plants were to arrive sometime last week, so we spent every evening setting end posts for the trellis system and marking out the rows. Our rows are 10 feet apart (marked those with string), and the plants are set 4 feet apart – used orange spray paint to mark each spot. So when the 500 Triple Crown plants arrived late on Wednesday afternoon we were set to go. We only had enough daylight left that evening to set 50 plants, but Thursday and Friday evening, after work, we got another 100 plants into the ground – Jeff and Lars used the rototiller to dig holes, Tina followed and planted.
We finished the rest of the planting on Saturday – which was good, because on Sunday we got one heck of a storm. Heavy rain and blustering wind quickly turned to ice and snow. We lost power late in the evening and by Monday morning, 7 of our largest pine trees had been knocked down 🙁
It was an extreme temperature change, we went from seeing the first crocus on Saturday to having ice and snow the next evening. But we did order our first set of grape vines: 200 Chambourcin should be shipped in early April.
