Encouraging What is Already There

Comments | 2

• Submitted by cgrotke on June 9, 2016 at 7:43 am

  I like the plan

  “I believe that through our efforts to avoid cutting anything until necessary and to do so with minimal impact, we have been encouraging the vegetation on the bank. This has helped retain a little more water, and newly thriving tall plants have provided more shade for the berries to thrive. ”

  I agree. We’ve been slowly developing gardens in our side yard over the last decade or so. We let “weeds” do the initial work of getting a bit established and working the hard soil.

  I let things that look nice and want to grow there keep going, then replace weedy things with nicer plants like ferns or grasses. I’ve let little saplings grow into trees. What used to be a hot dry area is now nice to look at and becoming quite the habitat. We get more birds now, for example.

  I have a couple of raspberry stalks that put out about as many strawberries as you get. And I think we have a couple of strawberry plants in there that produce enough berries for a mouse family.

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• Submitted by BusyMom on June 9, 2016 at 1:15 pm

  Encouraging berries

  I’ve done all that for years, ever since discovering how many wild blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries were already on my property. Many were on somewhat steeply sloped land which would be a pain to mow grass on anyway. They’re all thriving, and this spring especially they seem extra loaded with blossoms, possibly due to the relatively mild winter.

  Furthermore, when we put in buried electric lines 20-plus years ago, I went to the trouble of digging up all the ladyslipper plants in the path, making sure to include big wide chunks of soil around the roots of each, and carefully replanted them afterwards. The beautiful success of that endeavor rewards us every late May!

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