Backyard Before and After: Part 1

The yard is still a work in progress and there will probably end up being like 30 before and after entries, but this is the first one complete right now: the southwest corner where you enter the backyard when following the sidewalk around the garage. 

This is what the area looked like when we walked into the backyard on a visit at the end of May 2013:

May 2013

I used some of these photos on a 'before and after' post last year to show how fast things grow in Portland in the spring, since it was only a month between the shots above and below.

Besides filling with weeds, this area became overgrown with the blackberry plants that were there, and all the offshoots that grew from them over the time the house was vacant. There were also about a dozen small cherry trees growing here. We assumed they popped up from birds dropping seeds from cherries picked off a neighbor's tree next door. While we'd like a cherry tree, that neighbor's tree is full-sized. A dwarf cherry variety would be a must for our yard space, so these trees had to go.

April 2013

During some of our summer visits and soon after we moved, we started clearing this area. I took down the chicken wire fencing between the wood fence and around the clothesline. I cut down the cherry trees to dry for firewood and pulled out the roots. We never figured out what the plant shown below was since we never saw it flower or fruit, so we pulled it out and removed the wooden box and trellis.

April 2013

Over the winter I cleared out remaining fence scraps, concrete blocks and other debris, pulled weeds, and tilled the area along the fence, as seen below.

January 2014 

While the blackberries were still dormant, I transplanted them. Added trellises, pulled weeds, tilled the entire area and spread grass seed once it started getting warmer. And here is what it looks like now:

June 2014

Yeah. HUGE difference.

In the earlier photos you could barely see that there were pear trees in there. Nick did a lot of pruning since they'd been neglected for so long, so they are all nicely-shaped now and all growing an incredible amount of fruit.

We definitely wanted to keep the blackberries, just a little more controlled and deliberately placed. Fortunately the main plant was already in a great location next to the clothesline, so we kept it there, just adding a trellis so we could train the branches to grow up instead of out. It looks much cleaner, takes up less space, and the berries will be more easily accessible for picking from any side.

I wanted to keep a few of the smaller blackberry offshoots as well to increase the fruit yield, so I made a plan to transplant them while still dormant to a new location along the fence, selecting the largest of the offshoot systems and composting the rest. I attached the trellises along the fence area between the two pear trees and transplanted those root systems. These trellises and the trellis attached to the clothesline we found in other areas of the yard, so those were existing. We always try to reuse or re-purpose existing items for projects before buying anything new.

As you can see below the newer plants are still fairly small, but should get bigger and bigger every year, each eventually getting as big as the mother system above. Like our other fruits and berries, I'd like to have enough blackberries to eat some from the bush, use some fresh picked for baking, some to freeze, and some to can as a compote, probably making a plum/blackberry mix to make them go further. We're really looking forward to being able to add stuff we grew ourselves to our meals year-round!

And here's another view of the same area, before and after:

May 2013

June 2014