An Antic Disposition

It has been an interesting Spring here in Westford, weather-wise. April dipped below freezing on the 3rd, 8th, 9th, 15th and 16th. Then we got a warm spell, a week of days that reached 75 °F (23 °C) and even one day that reached 87.4 °F (30.8 °C) (April 23rd). Then it struck, on May 1st, an overnight low of 28.7 °F (-1.8 °C).

The vulnerability, when a late frost like this occurs, is in bud development. If the plant, by warm sunny days, has been tricked into bud development, and then a freeze occurs, the bud will be injured or killed. Strawberries are particularly prone to this problem.

Because of interactions of thermal inversions at the ground, humidity levels, etc., a simple temperate reading is not an accurate indicator of whether damage actually occurred. For example, if humidity is high, the temperate can dip to freezing, but in the act of freezing water vapor (creating frost) energy is released (latent heat of fusion, as the chemists call it). So you have a few degrees of tolerance if humidity is high, if you have a fog, etc. In fact, commercial strawberry growers will handle this problem by running sprinklers when a freeze threatens, to increase the amount of water around the plants available to freeze, as a buffer to protect the plants. Every degree helps.

But I wasn't so lucky. The extent of damage was not clear until the strawberry plants started blooming this week. Here's what I am seeing.





Above is an example of a normal, healthy strawberry blossom. You see the ring of stames, the male organs of the flower, each with a filiament stalk tipped with an anther containing the pollen. In the center is the receptacle with the many carpels, which are the female side of the equation.

But in the picture below, we see a blossom from my garden that shows injury. Although the plant is sound, and it did flower, the carpels are dead. This blossom will not yield a berry.

From the looks of it, 40-50% of buds are damaged in this way. So no strawberry wine this year. I'll only have enough for fresh eating and ice cream.

Labels: Berries

The earth does not yield up her sweet fruits unrecompensed. For every berry I will harvest in September, I pay now an equal measure of sweat and blood. Hunched down and with thick gloves, I navigate the thicket of thorny bramble canes, the red raspberries, yellow raspberries, purple raspberries, blackberries, thimble berries and field berries, and restore man's order to nature's chaos.

The correct way to prune brambles depends on their variety, whether they are primocane-bearing, or floricane-bearing. Many raspberries, and all blackberries, are floricane-bearing, meaning they have a two-year cycle, where the canes that grow this year (the primocanes) will flower and bear fruit next year (when they will be called floricanes). The primocane-bearing varieties, on the other hand, bear fruit on this year's canes. I like having a mix, since that spreads out the harvest.

The floricane-bearing varieties, since they started their growth last year, will bear fruit in the summer, while the primocane-bearing varieties, which need to complete their growth in a single year, will bear fruit later, in the fall. Primocane-bearing varieties are cut to the ground after harvest. The maintenance of floricane-bearing varieties is a little more complicated. The floricanes are removed after harvest, and the primocanes, which will be next year's floricanes, are pruned and thinned while the plant in dormancy, late winter, which is the work I was able to complete before this last snowstorm.

Pruning of brambles will consider several factors:

1. The architecture of the plant. A bush full of large berries will have considerable weight. One option is to trellis the plants to support that weight. Another option, which I prefer, is to maintain the canes and side branches at a length where the plant can be self-supporting, 4-5 feet tall, side branches trimmed to 8-12 inches.
   
2. Cane density. It is better to have 3-5 thick, strong canes per linear foot than to have 15 smaller ones. The goal in the end is to have a bounty of fruit, not foliage. So now is the time to thin the canes.
   
3. Access for sun, rain, air and me. This is another reason to thin the canes. A big dense mass of canes competing for limited resources will produce poorly, be susceptible to mold, and will be difficult to harvest.
   

The question can fairly be asked, "Why go through all this trouble? Why not let the invisible hand of nature guide the development of the brambles? Let her decide. She will pick the winners and losers."

To that I respond, that nature, in her infinite wisdom, does not seem to care much for bringing me berries. I am not absolutely certain what role brambles play in the grand scheme of things, but if I had to guess, nature likes them to form wild, uncontrolled, dense masses of thorny canes, with berries inaccessible to larger mammals. That seems to be their natural tendency in my garden. However, in their natural state, the brambles thicket forms an ideal protective habitat for small birds, who can remain protected from predators while eating the berries. The berry seeds survive unharmed by the digestive system of the birds and are excreted, with fertilizer, in distant locations, leading to the better propagation of the species.

And so I battle the genes inside the berries, pitting my labors against nature's disordered fecundity. It breaks the back and scrapes the skin, but it must be done again each year, around this time.

Labels: Berries, Gardening

It was a good year for my berries. I have a 400 square-foot "berry patch", half of it for the Fragaria genus (Strawberries, Alpine Strawberries, Musk Strawberries) and half for the Rubus genus (Raspberries, Blackberries, Thimbleberries and the various crosses such as the Tayberry and Loganberry).

The strawberry harvest in June went well in spite of the unusually persistent wet weather we had in May. I normally try to garden organically, but with that amount of moisture coming after bloom, the conditions for Botrytis (grey mold) were too good, so I had to spray a couple times with Captan. In the end we had far more berries than we could eat, so I was able to take 10 pounds of fresh berries and made a few gallons of wine. This is cellaring now, along with the raspberry mead I started last fall, and a gallon of an herbal wine (spearmint, pepermint and lemon balm in a 2:2:1 ratio). I've never made an herbal wine before and the ingredients were improvised based on what had a pleasing smell in the herb garden at the time. So there is a non-zero chance that I will end up with a gallon of homemade mint mouthwash.

I've been picking the raspberries for around a month now. I have the usual red varieties as well as some yellow and black. My wife refuses to sacrifice any of these to my wine making exploits this year. I will comply with her wishes, but I do hope to be rewarded with a pie in return for my benevolance.

Last year I started another bed, this dedicated to members of the Vaccinium genus (Highbush Blueberries, Wild Lowbush Blueberries, Bilberries, Cranberries, Lingonberries and Everygreen Huckleberries). These all share a common need for acidic soil, so it makes sense to group them together. Since this bed is only a year old, the fruiting was negligible.

I'd love also to plant some Ribes genus plants (Gooseberries, Currants) but these are illegal to grow in Massachusetts. This is an argicultural restriction put in place back in the 1920's to prevent the spread of Pine Blister Rust, a serious and deadly disease of White Pines. The organism that causes Blister Rust does not spread directly from Pine tree to Pine tree but only via the intermediary of a Gooseberry or Currant plant where it completes part of its lifecycle. So when the government wanted to eliminate Blister Rust, they banned Ribes and so I have no Currants.

I also have various other berries and small fruit that don't fall into the above categories, including:

• A Medlar tree
  
• A Pin Cherry tree (hope to make some wine from the fruit this year)
• Grapes (American Vitis labrusca "Fox" grapes, like Concord, Mars and Remailly)
• Serviceberry
• Honeyberry (Lonicera Kamchatika -- native to Siberia)
• Elderberry
  

Some good sources of berry plants that I've used include Nourse Farms here in Massachusetts and Raintree Nursery in Washington state.

Good books for the home berry grower include:

• The Backyard Berry Book by Stella Otto
• The Berry Grower's Companion by Barbara Bowling
• Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden by Lee Reich

For New England growers, a subscription to the UMass Berry Notes newsletter is a must. Although it is targetted to the commercial grower, most of the information is applicable to the home grower as well.

Labels: Berries, Gardening, Wine