Rhubarb and roses

This raised bed is in the back garden and as I had revised plans in mind for it, I dug out all the plants to use in the shady border in the new kitchen garden.  It was a good opportunity to sort out the rubbly soil, something we are having to work our way through in all the back garden raised beds *sigh*  The soil was all removed and made use of in the first of the new veggie beds in the kitchen garden.  Adrian then started to refill it with sieved soil from another of the back garden beds.  We added a good deep layer of not-entirely-composted compost from the first bin we had filled ~ a somewhat smelly job, but it will gradually decompose in there.  That was topped with another layer of sieved soil, and finally with shop-bought compost.

I thought that roses and rhubarb would be good bed-fellows since they are both hungry plants. I can just as easily feed the entire bed, as it's quite small, as individual plants.  All the plants had a good dusting of mycorrhizal fungi powder over their roots when they went in, plus a couple of handfuls of chicken manure pellets mixed with the soil.  I then topped off the bed with bark chippings ~ which the blackbirds like to dig up and scatter everywhere LOL 

The two rosa rugosa at the back have been dug up and moved a couple of times now, but they don't seem to care in the slightest.  The one on the right is very much smaller as it was actually a piece that broke off a larger plant, luckily with some roots!

The rhubarb crowns were also previously planted in different places, as I bought them from Dobies last autumn and just needed to get them in the ground.  From left to right they are Victoria, Fulton's Strawberry Surprise, and Polish Raspberry Red.  Victoria has had a tough time, to be honest, but there are some leaves just visible so I'm hoping that it will perk up by next spring.  The Fulton's SS is looking very lively, despite being moved, and Polish RR has perked up.  Hopefully there will be rhubarb crumble on the horizon next year 😋   

Our friend, Sue, sent us some blackcurrant and redcurrant cuttings earlier in the year.  The photo above was taken after they had started to grow, but when I planted them they were just sticks with a handful of leaves!  I didn't have any potting compost at the time so just used some of the rubbly garden soil and poked the "sticks" in.

To be honest, I was amazed that they didn't all just curl up their toes and die.  I was even more amazed when not only did they quickly sprout new leaves, they started to flower too!  I even made an extra blackcurrant cutting by cutting a rather long twig in half.

All the blackcurrants have survived but I did lose one of the redcurrants.  They all seem to be thriving and hopefully I'll be able to plant them next year in the fruit cage we are planning to build.

I really wasn't expecting such a good result, and find it hard to believe that such peedie little plants are actually fruiting.  I'm pretty sure I should have really removed the fruit as the plants are so young but I didn't have the heart to.

I suppose if a plant is happy, then it will do it's best to live and thrive 😊