divaqs's Blog

My Berry Picking Tips
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.

Raspberries - Terraced Rows
Jun 12, 2007 | 8:03 AM PST
Tags: raspberries , terraced gardening

My raspberries have berries in the early summer and again in the fall. The first wave of raspberries are ripening on my vines.

When I bought my home I was fortunate to have with it a few rows of established raspberries already growing on a hill in the backyard. The problem I was running into was that the rows of berries were hard to maintain and pick on the steeply sloping hill, and it was somewhat unsightly.

So, I terraced a different hill and moved the raspberries to it over the winter, when they are dormant.

 

Rather than wire to give support to the raspberry vines I used bamboo poles, since I feel they are a bit more decorative and natural looking. I position the vines as they grow so they press against the pole in a way that holds them in a more upright position. Now that I am growing my own bamboo, I am hoping to be able to make my own bamboo poles in later years for this, though since bamboo is long lasting and rot resistant, I doubt I will need to replace the poles for quite a few years.

On every other terraced level I turned it into a deep pathway made of pea gravel. The deep pea gravel helps a lot to keep weeds almost non-existent in the paths, and reduces the chances of weed seeds making it to the raspberry rows. It also makes access to the raspberries a whole lot easier than the steep slope I used to have to try to balance on while picking.

 

As you can see in this picture, young vines don’t quite reach high enough for me to position them against the bamboo poles. I could probably have a lower bamboo pole to position those against if I wanted, but haven’t really felt the need for it. The young spring vines are the ones that will be growing the berries in the fall, and by that time they will be able to be positioned against the poles.

One drawback to what I did is that my rows of raspberries are below some evergreen cedar trees, which tend to turn the soil under them acidic. Raspberries aren’t fond of acidic soil, so I have been top dressing the soil during the winter with some wood ash from my fireplace. This should counter the affect of the cedars.