Raspberry Garden in an Afternoon

I love fresh raspberries. They are so red and velvety and sweet and juicy and smell of summer. The trouble is that the bushes they come from have lots of mean thorns. So how do you grow them in your garden to get the lovely berries without being caught like a fairy tale prince in the brambles?

Solution: Their own little raised garden bed.

Made from recycled tyres this bed is easy to make as it requires no power tools and it also saves the tyres from landfill.

My parents have an orchard on their farm and Mum very excitedly planted some raspberry canes several years ago. The trouble is that every year they produce new canes and more canes and spread from their nice little spot under the wires on which they were meant to be growing. Soon it became hazardous to go to close to the Granny Smith apple tree as they reached out toward it. The best raspberries always seemed to be in the middle of the patch where you couldn't reach them.

I just spent a week down home on the farm and built this nice little bed for them so they can't run away any longer.

To start you need 2 old tyres per bed. I used 17" low profile ones to get a good sized hole in the centre but small tractor tyres would also work if you have a friendly farmer with some old ones. The tractor made carrying them from Dad's stash down the paddock so much easier.

Put the tyres in stacks of 2 and line them up. I have 2 and a half stacks as I couldn't find a sixth tyre and 3 stacks just nicely fitted in the gap between the posts. The last stack will be finished next time Mum needs new tyres.

I put a layer of clay in the bottom of each stack and then filled them up with some nice black, gravely soil into which I mixed some rehydrated coir, soil wetter granules and slow release fertiliser. Make sure that you use your hand or the spade to push the soil right out to the edges of the tyres or the plants will be putting roots into air filled spaces.

Here are about 10 of the best raspberry canes planted in the tyres.

So this summer we should have lovely, red raspberries in easy reach and our legs will be safe when picking apples. Who knows? Maybe a raspberry and apple tart will be the result.