We live in the driest state in Aust ...so more delicacies like strawberries only grow where it’s cooler ...however in saying that prior to meeting my hubby in 1986 I lived in a very hot part of SA on a farm where there was a patch of strawberries growing in about 15 ft square patch they looked very sick / woody so I mowed them down to soil height with the lawn mower ,we then got rain ( rare in summer ) and the strawberries sprung to life and grew heaps of fruit which I made jam with I was picking them by the bucket full
I've never lived anywhere that grew better strawberries than Orange County, California. Almost no maintenance required, and they grew great, producing large, good-tasting berries.
My son in Washington sent me some raspberry starts, as well as some strawberry starts from his garden, so we are expanding the berry bushes this season. Bobby made a new wooden fence out front, and where we used to have the little strawberry plants (and the birds and squirrels eat them all) I have tried planting the raspberries, and hopefully, they will eventually spread so that we have a nice raspberry patch. Bobby also is taking down the ramp that he made outside of the back door, and I am going to use that little area for a new strawberry bed. I am going to put up a little bamboo fence around it to keep the dogs out, and then just add mulch and topsoil to plant the strawberries in. At the back of the strawberry garden (alongside of the house), I will make a taller trellis, and I can grow tomatoes on that, where it gets lots of sunshine. So far, the blackberry starts are growing great, and I saw what looked like flower buds on the largest one, so I am hoping that we might get at least a few berries this year, and should get lots by next year. The jostaberries are also growing well, but the frost might have killed the little blossoms that were on the vines, so not sure if that survived or not.
I keep meaning to plant berry bushes. I've got the room. I have an electric fence around a garden area I plowed & tilled a few years ago. I wonder the the bears can breech it.
@John Brunner Blackberries grew profusely over the property we owned in the Missouri Ozarks. "Locals" called them brambles, cutting them down relentlessly, but not on our property! There were a few red raspberry bushes intermingled here and there. One summer, my wife and I picked 20 gallons, freezing them mostly. I made some wonderful blackberry wine!
So far, all of my berry bushes seem to be doing good. I think that we lost most of the jostaberries in that last frost, but the bushes are doing fine and growing. One of the blackberry bushes had a few flowers, so we might get a handful of blackberries this year, enough to see how they taste, and what size they will be. All of the raspberries that Michael sent me are starting to sprout, and seem to be doing well along the fence. I ordered a few more currant bushes, and 2 red gooseberries that were on sale, so there will be more to plant somewhere. When I pruned back the grape vines, I started a couple of pieces of the vine in dirt, and was amazed to see that they actually sprouted, so once they have rooted well, I can set those out, too. I am hoping that by next year, we will actually get some fruit that the birds and squirrels don’t eat before we get any. One of my new little raspberry plants....
Arborists have told us in the East that currants and gooseberries are hosts to a rust disease that devastates Eastern white pine which is our most abundant and fastest growing evergreen. This is especially true in areas where currants and gooseberries grow wild. My Eastern whites since 1976 have gone crazy with growth so I guess the goosies and currants ain't around here.
Let’s hope your raspberries don’t get out of hand @Yvonne Smith they are a noxious weed in the Adelaide hills they spray them with tree killer to get rid of them .
WOW ! ! Raspberries must really grow well in Australia, @Kate Ellery . Maybe it is a wild variety and it is very hardy. The raspberries here do spread, albeit slowly, and we are hoping to have more plants each year. They are in a small section of the front yard, and pretty well boxed in , so they can only spread in that area, and it will take them years to do that. The blackberries might be a different story. I think that they can spread faster, but we only have a few blackberry plants, so there is room for more of those, too.
@Yvonne Smith , are they thornless blackberries? That's what I have. I haven't had a problem with them spreading. They grow new stalks each year but the last year's ones die and have to be removed.
I have a variety of different kinds, @Shirley Martin , some are the thornless and some are from wild stock. I ordered some root cuttings from ebay for wild blackberries, which I think will be a smaller berry. I also wrote to my niece in western Washington and asked her to send me some starts from the huge wild (and thorny) blackberries that I remember and loved from when I lived out there. The thornless ones were from Lowes when they were closing them out last year, and they didn’t get actually planted until this spring. So far, they are all doing well, and the Washington ones had already started to spread, just while planted in the container that I had them in last year.
I LOVE wild blackberries, so if they spread, I will just put starts along the back fence line and it will take a while before we have too many for me ! They are expensive to buy here, so if I have more berries than we need. I might take some to the farmers market and sell them; but that is several years down the road yet.
Yvonne, just remember to let them get completely black before you pick them. if you don't, they will turn your mouth inside out. Trust me, I know.
That is SO true, @Shirley Martin ! I think that they might be the very worst berry to try and eat if it is not completely ripe, but once they are ripe, nothing is more delicious. My mom had all kinds of fruit when I was growing up, and I loved having a bowl of raspberries with sugar and cream (canned milk) for breakfast, and once the raspberries were done, the blackberries were getting ripe, so then I had blackberries for breakfast, or any other time I felt like it. When I lived in western Washington, they grow wild all over, and there is so much rain that the berries get HUGE, and very sweet and delicious, not like the little wild ones here in Alabama, which are not any larger than a raspberry, and not as sweet.