After my poor berry plants being given minimal support and, for all practical purposes, being neglected, today they finally have proper supports. I used 6-ft metal posts with wire cross supports. I'm a semi-dedicated recycler and purchased both posts and wire at a farm estate auction last summer. Untangling the wire from the several coils was not fun but kept it out of the landfill where it might have gone which gives a certain amount of satisfaction (and both were old enough to be made in the U.S.A.!).
My question is, since vining berries bear on last year's growth, how do you vine/train them with that in mind? I was thinking of placing the wire so that the new growth each year was placed on every other wire, perhaps odd years on the odd-numbered wires and even years on the even-numbered wires. How close together is practical for the rows of support wires?
Yesterday, after years of neglect, I finally gave my grapes proper support and am looking forward to a bountiful harvest next year. This year will likely be light since so many branches were broken in the "fixing" process, but next year should be grape lovers' heaven.
Oh, and that organic versus chemical thing . . . my garden has been 100 percent organic from the first day with no pest or disease problems. True, this is only going into my seventh year, but so far it's all good. It's amazing what good drainage, a lot of natural manure (horse/steer), leaves, etc., will do combined with love. It cannot be my gardening skills because those don't exist; I'm about as novice as they get, but the garden apparently loves my ignorant love. Another explanation is that it takes pity on such a novice who grew up on a farm at least making a try at it. Oh, that farm I grew up on . . . my grandfather did not believe in chemicals; he did believe in crop rotation, planting by the moon, etc., and had a very productive farm. He grew up on a farm in another part of the country, before gas tractors, widespread commercial fertilizers, etc., so learned to do it with minimal harm to the land. Last summer/fall, NPR had a program about an all organic farm (large) in the midwest that practiced crop and livestock rotation and outproduces its neighbors so it can work if one wants to provide the effort of learning and practicing. We tend to forget that we all are here as a result of non-intentional organic farming. It is important to remember things that kill continue to kill, we are all in the food chain. Denis Hayes, among others, said, "Walk lightly on the earth." Good advice for us all. To me that means use any non-natural "supplements" sparingly and carefully as well as only when really needed, not just convenient. Hauling manure into the garden and shoveling it in place has been good exercise; watching the growing population of earthworms has been satisfying; the resulting produce has been delicious.
So how spacing about those cross wires for the loganberries, boysenberries, etc., and training?
Glenna