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Although the weather is still unpredictable (there is a blizzard outside right now), Spring has certainly arrived. Almost overnight, all the buds on the “Mount Baker” lilac turned green.

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The most exciting news is that everything we planted last year survived their first winter. Most of the trees and perennials we put into the ground were baby plants. With record snow fall and cold snaps this winter, I was worried about how many of them would make it. But after a careful check under the mulch, I found almost everything we planted last year has started to come back to life.

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The garlic

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The fruit trees

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Even the newly planted hazelnut trees started leafing out:

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Besides the hazelnut trees, we decided to add a berry garden in the backyard this Spring. To begin with, we ordered five blackberry canes and fifteen raspberry canes.

The blackberry canes

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The raspberry canes

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The new berry garden is located between the flower garden and the house. We have covered the field since last fall with black plastic to get rid of the grass. When the elm trees were removed a few weeks ago, we got yards of wood chips and used them to mulch the berry garden area.

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According to the planting guide, the canes need to be spaced a few feet apart. I used bricks to mark the location of the canes before digging.

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After getting the raspberry canes into the ground, I used flags to mark the canes so the dogs hopefully will not bother them.

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The blackberry canes were planted between the northern fence and the hazelnut trees.

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I also plan to add a garden path around the berry garden and the perennial garden. I laid out the shape of the path with garden hoses, and expanded the perennial garden bed to include the maple tree.

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The new shape of the garden bed works with the garden path much better. I filled the new garden bed with leftover wood chip mulch:

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The leftover concrete blocks make a perfect circle around the serviceberry bush:

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The nut trees and the berry canes added another 1000 sqft of edible garden space to our backyard, in addition to the 600 sqft of veggie garden. With good care, the berry garden should start producing next year, and the hazelnut trees should start producing after three years. I cannot help but wondering what our yard will look like in 5 years, with mature perennials, climbing roses, and fully-grown fruit and nut trees. What about your yard? Did everything wake up? What are you planting this Spring?

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