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I have a blackberry bush in my garden that has been growing a little wild on it’s own. It’s all over the place as you can see in the picture above. Now I would still like to have many blackberries year after year so I’ll have to prune it. A blackberry bears fruit on one year old wood so in the winter you cut away the branches that carried fruit this year. Keep two new strong branches to carry the fruit next year.

Just wanted to show you what the weather conditions are like on average in my area:

Usually we have a wet and windy fall and most of the snow falls in January and February. There’s not that much heat around here, so growing oranges are out of the question and melons are difficult. But we’re not too far north to justify transporting our food from far away on trucks. This is not the north pole. If it was that hard to grow our own food maybe we should consider moving further down south. Who said we should live up here anyway… The oil companies?

I’m starting to take a look at what kinds of vegetables I’ll be growing in 2009. Most of the plants from 2008 I’ll also grow next year, since they all turned out quite well and brought us a lot of food on the table. As inspiration I’ve put together two lists for you to get ideas from.

2008 and 2009:

• Bean
• Beetroot, long
• Beetroot, round
• Carrot
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Parsnip
• Pea
• Potatoes
• Radish
• Red Onion
• Spinach
• Yellow Onion
• Zucchini

2009:

• Artichoke
• Asparagus
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chard
• Clove
• Corn
• Fennel
• Garlic
• Horse Radish
• Pumpkin
• Silver Beet
• Soy Beans
• Spring Onions

I will try to get hold of some fine-meshed net to keep the bugs out. Or maybe two layers of net to keep the cats out too. (How do you keep cats out of your vegetables?)