Work continues in the new berry planting area. The fence is now nearly complete – all the posts are in, with both heights of high tinsel wire stretched and the final lengths of barb going on today. The contractor I hired to do the work has been steadily chipping away at what seemed like a huge project when it began and the fence is just a week or two away from being done.

While Dave was out working on the fence, i wend ahead and had him dig the holes we need for the trellis ends. I went around and dug small pilot holes for him, and he made quick work of digging the 32 holes I need for the trellis ends.  We begin work on the trellis poles inside the beds this week.

The Berries!

Quite a few berries are actually growing in this initial planting, so it looks like we will have a small crop this year. I still need to do some clearing and ground work so i can get into the rown to mow down the grass and alfalfa thats come back between the row covers.

The slideshow below shows some recent shots of the developing plot.

The task of laying the ground cover out, to cover each side of the eight trellised berry rows has begun. I dug the side furrows with the tractor, this furrow takes the outer edge of the ground cover fabric, while the inner edge is pinned down with a 6″ ground staple along the berry row. This process is very labor intensive with lots of rocks to clear, digging and pinning. I’ll try to take some more detailed shots of this part of the project soon, but for now here is a far-off shot of the berries with the (black) ground fabric visible.

Installing the drip system

A single line of 1/2″ embedded drip emitter tubing runs along each row of berries. These tubes are partially buried and completely under the row cover.  The have built in, low flow emitters every 12″; designed to be run for a long period of time they will soak each bed thoroughly. I will post some more pictures of the system details soon. The lines are almost complete and the system should be ready to pressurized shortly!