Every winter I spend some time cleaning up our berry house. This year has taken a while.

I began attacking this job back in May, and I only really reached a rough finishing point this week.

Still, in that time I have tamed a jungle, made repairs, at least partially laid a ground mulch to reduce the weed burden, and installed and planted a new bed to extend our berry harvests!

A bit of background

If you’re new around here, we inherited a 6 meter Trade Tested shade house when we moved onto the property. For a while we used it as a place to store plants, and it was fine.

Then in 2021, the cover blew off in a storm. I made some enquiries and did the maths. It turned out that replacing the cover made no sense at all. So I covered it in bird net and shade cloth instead – a situation which used materials we already had on hand, and which has now survived longer than the original cover did.

It struck me this set up would be pretty ideal for growing berries. So in 2022, we planted a permanent bed of berries. The three varieties we planted were blackberry ‘Karaka Black’, boysenberry ‘Dream’, and yellow raspberry from Kōanga Institute. There’s also a barrel of blueberries.

All of those plants take a couple of years to really get going. So last summer we were absolutely delighted to be pulling off half a kilo or more of berries each night between mid-December and mid-January.

We’ve made some good calls and some bad calls in our time here; but the berry house turned out to be one of the best ideas we’ve ever executed.

The juggle

A few years ago I wrote an entire post about why this job takes so dang long. It’s the juggle.

There was plants to move around; repotting to do; dead plants to clear out; an entire passionfruit plant to rip out; repairs to make; errant berries to dig up; ground mulch to lay – and that’s barely the beginning. This year I wanted to add another bed as well!

It’s the most overwhelming of jobs because it’s actually about 50 jobs. And I kind of just have to juggle them around until it’s done.

For context, the image at the top of this blog is where I ended up. But here’s where I started:

It’s tedious, overwhelming, usually very boring work. This year was no exception. It took weeks to work my way through.

Ground mulch

I was particularly concerned about the weed burden in the soil this year. They really got on top of me last summer and I just know that as soon as it gets warm, all the seeds will begin to germinate and this job will be even harder next time.

That makes me want to cry. So I needed to cover up the “non-productive” soils as much as I possibly could.

In 2021, we laid down an entire pallet of cardboard boxes. It felt like a stupidly thick layer at the time, but it did help, and it’s entirely decomposed now.

I’m not likely to find pallets of virgin cardboard for $1 again any time soon, so I considered my options.

I had 71 unused biodegradable A4 courier bags that had begun the decomposition process. It turns out they have a use-by date, and I had not used them in time.

I removed the non-compostable strip of plastic and stuck them together into ’tiles’ of 5 bags. Then I laid them out at the far end of the berryhouse. It didn’t cover the entire area, but it should prevent weed growth for a while..

Richard’s workplace had a respectable stack of large cardboard boxes that I scavenged last week. I removed all the tape and soaked them in a wheelbarrow, then I laid them over the courier bags, and worked my way down the rest of the berryhouse until I ran out of those too.

Finally, there was a cotton duvet cover which had been shredded by claws and replaced. I folded it up and laid it down as well.

I didn’t manage to cover the whole area, but it got me pretty far. I’ll have to keep bringing home lawnmower boxes from Richard’s workshop and finish it off as the materials are available.

Expansion

With the ground clear, it was time for some expansion.

Given the berry house had turned out to be such a great idea, we want more berries in there. We’d pulled out the passionfruit (which has provided 2 fruit in 4 years) that had been taking up the eastern side of the berryhouse to make room for another bed of berries.

We scrounged up a couple of frames and I filled them with compost. Then I found some rooted canes to put in there. The great/terrible thing about berries is they’re pretty happy to propagate themselves wherever they want, so it wasn’t too hard to find the plants.

Richard and I both agreed that the best berry in our collection is the blackberry. They’re huge, sweet, firm, and prolific. So as I pulled up the plants which had spread, I found what I hoped were the blackberries, and replanted them into the new frame.

It’s a bit of a gamble – it’s possible they’re boysenberries. That would ultimately be fine, but it’s not what we’re aiming for.

Still, I had noted that the blackberries seem to have greener stems, while boysenberries have more purple stems. Aside from where I found them, that was my only clue as none of them have leaves.

I also added a new berry to the collection. I felt like a red raspberry was a glaring omission in our harvests, so I picked up ‘Waiau’ a couple of months ago.

We still have to pop in a couple of posts and run some wires for support, but the main thing is the plants are in, and they’ll be in full production – hopefully of blackberries – by Christmas 2025.

Done, for another year

I didn’t expect for the shade/berry house to become a running theme in my blog, and yet here we are. Each year I end up writing about it because each year I spend so much freaking time working on it that it feels notable.

But I also love the progression. What was a reasonably impractical shade house is now a thriving berry house. And it’s hard to convey just how much joy I got from harvesting our own berries last year. It was so much fun that I briefly considered running a Marketplace ad to try and find more busted shade house frames and becoming a berry farmer!

I wish it was less work each year (and if I didn’t store so many plants in there, it might be); but it’s also totally worth it.

I’m really looking forward to that after-dinner routine of picking berries, then eating them on the deck as the early summer sun goes down, and the Christmas lights flick on the pine nut tree.