Creeping Rasberries on the Isle of Crap

                Actually, this blog is about chickens and fruit trees…but first let me explain the blog title. It all began with the cacti. When I began retirement these invasive plants had established themselves on much of my sandy property. Herbicides could not penetrate their tough hides and if I cut them up with a mower or tiller each piece put down roots and became a new cactus…more trouble than “tribbles” on the Starship Enterprise. I decided the most natural method of ridding my property of this nuisance was deep shade where they at least seemed to struggle. I found a small clump of trees just behind my garden and began dumping wheelbarrow loads on top of wheelbarrow loads. I thought the cacti on top would at least smother out those on the bottom. Soon I began adding other noxious weeds to the pile…crab grass and two kinds of sand burrs. These further smothered the shaded cacti. This pile of “crap”…super invasive weeds that I did not want anywhere on my property, especially not in my vegetable or flower gardens, soon became a huge natural compost pile. As the pile rose among those trees it reminded me of palm trees on a tropical island…so I began calling it the isle of crap.

                After several years of composting, this soil became the deepest, most fertile and organic I had anywhere but considering what went into the compost I was not about to put any of it into my garden. Still, it would be a shame for it to go to waste. I had planted black raspberries and a few blackberries just outside the fence around my vegetable garden. The fence was to keep rabbits out of the garden but also to serve as a trellis for the brambles to grow against. There is also an apple tree just outside the garden on the southwest side and neither the berries outside the fence nor the rhubarb on the garden side seemed to mind a little afternoon shade. But black raspberries and blackberries “walk”; they went over the fence and planted their tips inside the garden. Bramble fruits are as invasive as weeds but that makes them the easiest of fruits to transplant and grow.

                I cut the limbs from the trees on the island as high as I could reach to let in more light and moved some of rich soil from the north side to the south side. I dug up or pulled the raspberry plants that had invaded the garden and planted them in the rich cacti and sandbur compost… making lemonade from life’s lemons. I’m certain we will get many berries from the new patch and even if the weeds in the compost do come back, the raspberries will tower over and shade them.

                So, what does this have to do with fruit trees and chickens? Fruit trees are step up in difficulty over growing vegetables and berries. Raising small livestock is a HUGE step up in degree of difficulty over maintaining a vegetable garden. You must wait a number of years for fruit trees to begin producing; you must spray fruit trees; you must prune fruit trees.  And then the birds may still ruin all your fruit and the yellow bellied sap suckers peck the tree trunks full of holes. If you really want fruit trees, think it through first and get dwarf or semi-dwarf trees. Plant the trees far enough away from the garden so that their roots and shade will not invade the vegetable plot. If you buy standard trees, most of the fruit will be too high for you to pick and after it falls on the ground it will only be good for the compost pile.

                And what about chickens for self-sufficiency in eggs and meat? Can you go off and leave livestock for a week like you can a well mulched garden? Even if they are free range, won’t you still have to buy some commercial feed? That feed will eventually draw mice and rats…so you will need cats and dogs to take care of the vermin. But dogs love to kill chickens even more than they do rats. Chickens love to cross the road so some hens will get squashed. Why did the chicken cross the road? Answer…to cause a car wreck and get you sued. Free range doesn’t sound so good anymore…better to invest in a coup and fenced-in chicken yard. That means more commercial feed expenditures. It also means the hens will peck each other more. Do you have children or grandchildren? Roosters are mean. We once gave a rooster to an elderly woman only to find out by way of the grapevine that she got angry after it attacked her so she blew it away with a shotgun. So again if you want to raise small livestock, think it through very carefully.

                To my way of thinking a small vegetable garden and a melon patch give a great deal of self-sufficiency with much less headache. But, you say, what about those great pies and desserts you will be missing out on without any fruit trees? The garden can give you strawberries, cantaloupes and watermelons, rhubarb pie (tastes like tart apple) butternut squash pie (tastes like pumpkin), sweet potato pie (tastes like pecan pie), zucchini sweet breads  (tastes like cake) and last but not least those raspberry and blackberry cobblers (taste great with vanilla ice cream). Isn’t just a plain old vegetable garden enough self-sufficiency? Don’t spread yourself too thin.