Opening up the food jungle
When I laid out my
plantings on the north side of the trailer, I figured I'd fill in
as much space as possible, then take things out as necessary when
the trees got bigger. So I included vegetable garden,
brambles, and even a clothesline in areas that will be 
beneath the eventual canopy spread of my
trees.
The great thing about
the fill-it-in-from-the-beginning method is that there's less
mowing and high yields right away. The bad part is that I
actually have to rip out those plants that are now making it
impossible to walk around our peach tree.
I plan to soften the
blow by replacing some of the shadowed blackberries with a home-propagated
gooseberry. And maybe I can move one of the
blackberries over a few feet and get in another year or two of
production?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I read you might get another year or two from your blackberries after you transplant them. I wanted to let you know I watched a youtube video of a guy who has many blackberry plants. He said on average a person can get five years or so from them. But his plants were on their 14th year. What he does is let them grow until one of them reaches the top wire which is about 4ft. tall. He cuts off the top of that one to promote lateral growth along the wire, then cuts all the others down to the base of the plant except for one. The one he saves he cuts off at the bottom wire which is about 2ft. tall. Every 3 or weeks he cuts back the new growth from the base until June, then lets them grow until next year. He says he gets plenty of fruit from the lateral branches and so far he has been on the same plants for 14years. I thought that was COOL! So I wanted to share. Thank you for your nonstop posting of your garden life, I love it. Have a great year. JOHN