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Blackberries or Raspberries in The SFG |
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To answer your question about blackberries and raspberries, we usually keep them away from a Square Foot Garden where other crops are planted. Remember that things like blackberries and raspberries spread underground through their root system and keep coming up where you don't want them. However, you could go ahead and plant raspberries in the same Mel's Mix and we would recommend that you build a long, narrow box (2' wide by however long) and plant only blackberries - 1 per square foot. That would help keep them under control and they wouldn't be coming up in other parts of a box where you had other crops planted. You would want to add more compost to the soil each year to replenish the nutrients. Blackberries would need some sort of support to hold them up as they grow since they tend to spread out along the ground.
Mel suggests not mixing blackberries and raspberries in the same SFG box either. Both plants will send out suckers and try to take over. Blackberries and raspberries will ripen at different times also, making harvesting more difficult. Mel says to think of Blackberries and raspberries more like a hedge, plant your 2x? box with just one kind of plant. Adding a tomato tower will give this “hedge” more structural support and keep going “up”, not “out” as much. Plants take the path of least resistance so if you train them to go up and snip the runners that go out, you can control the shape a bit more.
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