Northwoods Woman

When we first moved into our home in the Northwoods, we knew there was going to be a lot of work ahead of us, remodeling-wise.

After we replaced all the floors in the house, we set about reclaiming the southern half of the property that was overgrown with brush and littered with dead trees.  Unfortunately, we also had to remove a bunch of wild black raspberry bushes that lined one side of it.  At the time I was OK with this decision because I wasn’t too keen on the possibility of bears getting so close to my house when the berries came into season.

Now that we are more familiar with the critters that we share our property with, I’ve come to regret that decision.  Well, not totally.  I’m still not a fan of the possibility of and up-close-and-personal-encounter with bears, but maybe we could have transplanted them a little farther away.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

But I still wanted raspberries, and I wasn’t going to pay $5 for an itty bitty container of them at the store.  No, I wanted to grow and pick my own!  Last summer Nichole and Corey were generous enough to bring up a dozen plants from their home, and I found a great spot for them where I waited for them to take root and produce the amazing fruit of my youth.

Yeah, well, they all died, except 1.  I was heartbroken, but I wasn’t deterred.  A business associate just happened to have excess plants that I could have, and his wife brought me a dozen plants to try.  What the heck… they were free.

So this spring when the snow was all gone and the plants were starting to bud I cautiously went out to see if they survived the rough winter.  They did.  And so did that 1 plant from Nichole and Corey. Phew!

I may have mentioned before that the soil up here sucks is not very conducive to growing vegetables… mostly sand with rocks thrown in for good measure.  And I’ve been having a heck of a time over the last 10 years trying to find just the right spot in my yard where my plants will even enjoy ample sunshine due to all the trees on our property (an no, I will not cut even one down just for a garden… I’m a treehugger.  Don’t judge.).

Last year I waged all out war and decided I wasn’t going to let these conditions win.  I WAS going to prove that I still had my green thumb, come hell or high water!  So I went back to my square-foot-gardening that I love so dearly, and combined it with raised beds, reusing the logs from an old garden that failed me miserably (I also recycle, if you haven’t guessed already).

A new area was chosen next to a flower garden that my MIL Georgia had planted for me.  This was phase one:  building the plots.  The next phase is on-going:  building up the soil.  Not an easy task when you like to grow organically.  Top soil, manure, and organic matter that will biodegrade naturally are my only allies.

Yesterday, I was able to see that my strategy is starting to work.