divaqs's Blog
divaqs's posts about: blueberries
Jun 21, 2007 | 8:52 AM PST
Tags: berry picking , strawberries , raspberries , blueberries
With over 300 strawberry plants, over 50 raspberry vines, roughly 20 blueberry bushes, plus at least another dozen or so other kinds of berry plants in my yard, I do a whole lot of berry picking. In other words, I get a whole lot of practice and plenty of time trying to figure out how to do it well.
Of the many different things to put picked berries in, my favorite is a milk jug with the top corner cut-off.
It is cheap, light, easy to wash, and has a good handle, so is easy to keep a hold of while crawling around berry bushes. I like using the half gallon jugs for my kids and the gallon jugs are about the right size for adults. Once the berry season is over, simply recycle or dispose of the jug, so it doesn’t have to sit around the rest of the year.
These are some things I have found helpful for me:
- While picking berries from your own yard, try to weed under the berry bushes. This not only makes it easier to spot future berries, but draws your attention down low, where ripe swollen berries often hide.
- Get to know your berry plants. For example, I last counted 5 different kinds of strawberry plants in my yard, each tends to ripen berries a little differently, with some being totally ripe when a nice dark red and others being totally ripe when mostly red, but never reaching a dark red color. I even have some that are ripe when an off white color. I taste some of the berries as I pick to get a sense of how ripe they are, as a sort of quality testing. My kids seem to do the tasting naturally, while I’ve at times have gotten so caught up with getting the chore of picking done that I have forgotten to do likewise, only to discover later that the berries weren’t quite as ripe as I thought they were.
- Be sure to pick up leaves, branches, vines, and look under. In many cases ripe berries are heavy and cause things to droop, which can make them more hidden in grass, under leaves, and so on. Typically, if I see one ripe berry it is a sign that there are more in that area that are hidden.
- Wash and soak the berries in water after picking them. It is best to have someone in the family that is not squeamish do this, since it is not uncommon for previously unseen bugs to appear once the berries are submerged for awhile under water. If you don’t mind extra protein with your berries, feel free to skip this. Personally, I prefer more bug free berries.
- If freezing berries, most do best by being initially frozen on a cookie sheet before being put in freezer bags. That way they aren’t all frozen in a giant chunk of berry ice when you are ready to use them. Blueberries and huckleberries can skip this step since they naturally don’t stick together when frozen.
I’d love to hear any berry picking tips that work for you as well.
Apr 14, 2007 | 10:32 PM PST
Tags: blueberries , hedge , blueberry , evergreen , landscaping
It always surprises me when people assume edibles can't be attractively organized.
Oftentimes making edibles attractive is simply a matter of using the same principles in design with them as is done with ornamentals. An example of this are my evergreen blueberry hedges that line my drive way.
One of my very first projects after moving into my house a little more then three years ago was to rip out the horribly overgrown Junipers and replace them with about 20 evergreen blueberry bushes.
Here is a picture of the "ornamental" juniper bushes that used to line my driveway three years ago.
Personally, I thought they were anything but ornamental.
Today I took a photo of one of the hedge rows that now line my driveway.
The blueberry bushes haven't reached full size yet, but are getting close to forming a hedge. The trick to getting them to form a hedge is planting them a little closer together then is recommended. The recommendations are based on optimizing space for maximum berry production, but my experience has been that even with them spaced closer together I get way more blueberries than my family can keep up with.
This time of year the blueberry bushes have a nice splash of extra color while covered with a large amount of pinkish ribbed bell shaped flowers.
The variety of blueberries I planted for hedges were the Evergreen Sunshine Blueberries, described by my favorite nursery, Raintree Nursery, as:
"A unique evergreen selection with attractive year round foliage and hot pink spring flowers. The bush grows 3-4 feet tall and wide, and produces up to ten pounds of delicious, light blue, medium sized berries. They ripen over a very long season, from early August through early September. Hardiness to 0 degrees F, a very low chilling requirement of only 150 chilling hours and a tolerance for higher pH soils makes this a perfect choice for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, the South or in California."
I like having a good selection of evergreen plants in the front yard, for year round affect. My blueberry hedges are a big part of that. In the fall there is a time that they shed a lot of their leaves, which shocked me the first time I saw it, since I thought they might have a disease, but after two years of observing this, have come to accept it as normal. Even when shedding leaves in the fall they have new leaves growing, so they are never completely bare.
