Recipe for a raspberry bed


  • Travel to Longford and "selflessly" prune your dad's raspberry canes.
  • Bring all the prunings home and cut them to 16-18" lengths.
  • Take one lovely burly man with a good back.
  • Instruct said man to dig a nice bed with a barrow of lovely rotted horse manure.
(Mmm...horse poo...thanks horses.)
  • Add some extra chicken poo and some calcified seaweed (a good handful of each.)
  • Add a barrow-load of manky sheep's wool - not good enough for textiles but a nice long-term feed for the garden, and its like making a soft warm bed for your fruit.
  • Roll out some mulch mat and hold it down with a few stones. (I've become a bigger and bigger fan of mulch mat through the years...hooray for not much weeding!)
  • Cut some holes in at fairly random intervals - aiming for 8-10" apart.
  • Poke aforementioned raspberry canes through the holes and 12" into the soil.
  • Abandon poking canes fairly soon due to stony ground and get lovely burly man to finish the job.
  • Throw some net over the lot if you live in an area where deer ravage every single thing you plant, even eating the roses off your lovely rose bushes.
  • Stand back and admire your efforts, making sure the kettle is on for burly man and the jaffa cakes are out.
  • Wait several months to enjoy lovely raspberries!