Raspberry Crop

Here is the first raspberry (and sweet pea) of the 2009 crop. Knowing that more berries were on their way, I decided to recruit my loved ones to help with the picking.It took Laneah a couple of days to tell the difference between the pink (not quite ready) raspberries, and the red (ripe) raspberries, but she got it down.
The next day we had a few more.
Donovan never really could tell which ones were ripe, and all the berries he picked (ripe or not) went straight into his mouth. When I said, "let's pick raspberries," it must have translated to "let's eat lunch."

The next day, we picked even more raspberries. I knew the number of ripe raspberries was growing exponentially, so I decided I needed some real help. I recruited Mike to help in the evenings.
Mike was great, because most the berries he picked went into the container, and he could tell which ones were ready. Mike deserves a big thank you for all his help.

Here is a full container from one evenings picking. We continued to get more and more each night but I must have forgotten to take pictures. I think we pulled in three or four full gallon-sized pitchers over the week. We ended up using them to make freezer jam.


We inherited this raspberry patch when we bought the house, and we have ended up really enjoying it. We are learning a little each year about how to care for them. Through trial and error, and losing last summers crop, we learned that you don't cut down all the raspberries. Just the ones that had berries on them. The shoots that don't have berries will be the ones to produce berries the next year. We are also working on taming the patch. It is a little out of control, which makes picking a bit difficult. Maybe next year, we will have contained them to rows. We'll see.