Raspberry Patch

"Although I have at different times grown, with more or less success, nearly all species of hardy bush fruits, I have always been partial to the red raspberry."
-- George Aiken

Two years ago, my uncle David Aiken dropped 7 or 8 raspberry plants on my porch. "For your garden," he said. At the time, we didn't have much of a garden; just a 10x20 foot plot over which I had run the tiller and constructed three cedar beds. Along the western edge, we sunk the berry bushes in the clay.

Since then, the garden has grown, and so have the berries. Each year, we have reclaimed more of the field of goldenrod that surrounds our garden, so that it is twice the size we started with. And, not wanting a berry patch right in the dead center of a vegetable garden, last weekend we dug them up and moved them -- about 25 bushes in all.

A few things to note. First, Uncle David warns me that we will be forever digging up raspberries from the original patch location. "Unless you think you got all the runners," he says, meaning "there's no way you got all the runners." Okay, I can live with that. When it comes to gardening, I generally don't like to do things right the first time anyway. Second, the new patch location is near the edge of our lawn. Another life goal nearer to accomplished: to minimize my time spent cutting grass! If David, as he promised, shows up with blackberry bushes, we'll dig up even more of the lawn and insert them.

Finally, my great grandfather George wrote that history does repeat itself. I'm not saying I'm nearly the farmer he was, but I will say that these plants descend from his berry patch in Putney, Vermont.** I don't have his green thumb, but we are, in fact, growing food at my home and putting it on the table to eat. And it's not just rewarding to keep that legacy alive; it's a lot of fun too.



**Important note: when the original berry patch was planted, one of the plants came from Sue McKain's yard in Connecticut. Does this mean the Aiken strain in my patch isn't completely pure? If yes, that's fine by me; in fact, I prefer a hybrid anyway.