My wife and I welcomed a new baby into the family this week. It was probably a good thing it rained this weekend so I don't feel bad not being able to work out at the homestead. Despite the rain, I did get a couple things done. My dad brought over some corn crib sections that we put up around the grape vines that should serve three purposes. First, it will obviously give the grapes a place to grow. Second, it should cause the grapes to droop down through the wire and make for relatively easy picking. Finally, it'll provide a nice shady spot in the summer to have a little bench. The grapes seem to be very slow growing, and I think a couple died, so we'll have to replace them and then extend the hoops.
We also decided to try heavy tomato cages for the blackberries. I'm not sure it will work, as it tends to keep them kind of bunched up, and so I'm not sure if they'll get enough air around the leaves, but we had seen some of the local Amish doing this for raspberries, so decided to give it a try before we put up the permanent trellis for the berries. There are little "suckers" coming up, so once we get the strawberries all transplanted, I'm going to work that area up to expand the blackberry patch. We plan to mulch the berries with old hay and see how that works to keep down the weeds.
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