Patio Planter & Raspberry Shortcake

On our drive back to Portland from the olive grove tour last fall we stopped at this locally-owned nursery/garden center near Sherwood, Oregon because it was advertising a Japanese maple sale, and we wanted one of those for the garden area outside of the living room window. While there we looked at what else they had and there were several small potted raspberry plants that were fruiting. They were call 'raspberry shortcake' and they were delicious! We didn't buy then since it was the end of the season, but made a mental note to come back and get some for the spring.

Our house came with a bed of established golden raspberries, which I'd never had before because they are too fragile for transport so they may occasionally be found at a local farmers market, but that's it. Raspberries are y favorite berry, so I wanted to have several varieties. Raspberry shortcake is a dwarf variety, which meant they would do well in a planter and make a great green addition to our patio living room plan.

This project started with the purchase of a storage bench in the Ikea Applaro outdoor furniture line, which is what we picked for the patio. I put the bench together, leaving off the top lid piece to get what you see below:

Ikea Applaro storage bench

Then I used a staple gun and some very thick tarp (from a torn Burning Man shade structure) to create a sturdy liner:
 

Before filling it with soil, I made a few drainage holes in the bottom of the tarp. Then added the dirt and the two raspberry plants we picked up at the end of February when we passed the same nursery again on the way back from a beach trip:

Planted March 15th, 2014

It looked really sad. But just two months later last year's canes are full of leaves and ripening berries and new growth has filled in all around, which will provide a second round harvest later in the summer:

May 16, 2014

So perfect for a planter. These little guys would have been completely overrun by the giant raspberries in the garden box. We did have some extra space in there so I ended up planting an additional 3 varieties: Newburgh, Amity, and some starts of an unknown variety from a friend's garden. And it really does work perfectly as a planter on the patio, where I plan to spend many summer evenings relaxing on the outdoor couch with a bowl full of just-picked raspberries:

Pierre also enjoys relaxing on the patio

Update: June 12, 2014

We've been getting berries for about a week! Just 3 months between emergence from dormancy to this:

Plycraft Lounger Touchups

I occasionally see this same chair listed on craigslist or ebay for $500-1000, so we got a such a great deal for paying just $300. There were a few scuffs on the wood here and there, but nothing too bad. Here are a couple shots of the blemishes on there when we bought it:

With the exception of one small edge area where the wood was slightly damaged, the rest of the scuffs just needed to be buffed or sanded out. This was a quick project. I systematically worked my way over each section of the chair, using a fine sand paper to lightly remove or minimize the surface blemishes, then went over the entire thing with a nice wood oil. This was one of my rainy day projects at some point over the winter, just hadn't gotten around to posting about it.

Here are some shots of the chair post-clean up and oil polish:

So beautiful. It looks nearly new now. What surprises me is what great condition the leg bases are in. Compared to the wood parts, there's not as much you can do about improving those once damaged. Common problems I see on so many of the same loungers for sale out there are the metal is rusting significantly, the black base cap and/or an end piece or two is missing, but ours isn't missing anything and there's minimal tarnish on the legs.