Knowing when to fold them

Someone I know has just bought a house and acquired a hugely impressive back garden with it, complete with several empty raised beds. Always one to try and spread my addictions, I've provided him with as many of my spare seeds and plants as he'd take.

However, because I'm not a very nice person, I have also taken the opportunity to give him what I can only describe as the horticultural equivalent of a practical joke. It's a mutant raspberry/loganberry/tayberry/tribble thing which has the advantage of producing lots of tasty fruit, but the fairly major disadvantage of being utterly uncontrollable. I was given it myself by a friend who in fairness did warn me that it would spread everywhere, but I was confident that I could contain it.

On a related topic, let me tell you about what I've been doing today:

He said, "Don't dig it there, dig it elsewhere. You're digging it round and it oughta be square."

More observant people may notice the green leafy thing on the right of the picture. That is the mutant raspberry/tribble. Earlier this year, the scene looked a little more like this:

Mutant raspberry on one side, in its own raised bed, surrounded by bricks and safely walled away from the bed where swedes and cauliflowers will one day grow. I thought I was safe, simply because there was no physical connection between the two sections of garden.

Fast forward three months and I've got little mutant raspberries popping up right smack in the middle of the bed. I would like to make it clear how impressive this is - the plant is going down through gravel, through sand, sideways through a small brick wall, and then breaking up through weed-proof plastic matting and popping up over a metre away from its original source. There are people who escaped from Colditz who would envy that kind of tunnelling ability.

I did have the option of just playing whack-a-mole with it and chopping it down every time it popped up, but I could see that becoming a losing battle very quickly. So instead, I spent the day emptying a 30cm deep and 130cm2 raised bed of soil and packing it into bags, before covering the area in a weedkiller so poisonous that it legally couldn't be sold to me as weedkiller due to EU regulations (if anyone asks, I was either disinfecting a path or clearing away foot-and-mouth disease). I now have to wait a minimum of 2 weeks before putting the dirt back in and another 2 more before I can plant anything there.

Not pictured - the unnerving sizzling noise and the frenzied flailing of dying earthworms that I didn't see before pouring it on.

I then put down two layers of super-strong weed-proof plastic and bricked the whole thing in. The only way that the mutant raspberry is getting in this time is by tunnelling through concrete or going through this woven plastic fabric, twice, which is guaranteed impermeable for 15 years based on just one layer.

I fully expect to see a mutant raspberry sprout popping up before the end of the season.

In my defence, I did warn my friend what I was giving him. I don't think he took me seriously enough though. Sorry mate, no take-backs, even if it eats your house.

PJW