Posts Tagged ‘wild berries’
Berry Season
It’s a little later in the summer than what we have experienced over the past ten years, but we aren’t complaining. Wild black raspberries are showing up all over our property this week. This is made more thrilling by the fact we lost many bushes to a rust fungus that is extremely contagious. Over the last two years, Cyndie has dug up countless plants in an attempt to limit the spread to adjacent bushes that showed no signs of disease.
To offset the losses, Cyndie has been working to establish a patch of red raspberry bushes that aren’t susceptible to the rust disease. Unfortunately, the deer liked the spot where she planted them and munched off the tops of the plants before they could flower. No red raspberries showing up now.
With the black raspberries now ripening everywhere we turn, it would be wise to always bring a pale along on our daily dog-walking excursions. Berry picking can spontaneously occur at any time when the berries all ripen at once.
Cyndie has found that her efforts to cover the entire property when the season is at its peak could become an endless loop. By the time she returns to the place she started, more new ripe berries appear and she could just keep on going round and round again.
In contrast, her strawberry patch is all in one place. The biggest battle there seems to be a resident squirrel with a taste for the fruit. In classic squirrel behavior, this varmint tends to just take a bite out of each berry it can reach instead of eating just the entirety of one. Maybe it is trying to lay claim on as many as possible with the intent of returning later for a larger feast.
As much fun and sublimely delicious as it is to get fresh strawberries from our own patch, Cyndie says there aren’t enough to fulfill her desires for her massive jam-making extravaganzas. When she returns from the holiday weekend at the lake, I believe there is a trip to the local berry farm in her plans.
She needs to get the strawberry projects completed to make way for the black raspberry jam and baked goods spectacles that immediately follow.
It’s looking like it will be a berry, berry good season for us this year.
I say, “Mmmm!” to that! Better late than never.
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Orange Rust
It’s a sad year for our wild black raspberries. An outbreak of highly contagious orange rust disease has infested many, if not all, of the brambles that are scattered about our property. It’s the first time we’ve faced this calamity in the nine years we’ve been here.
The devastating thing we’ve learned about this disease is that it can’t be cured. The infected plants must be dug up or killed. Before moving on to a different stand of plants, the tools need to be cleaned to avoid spreading the disease to healthy plants.
The thing is, the spores spread in the wind and we’ve already seen evidence of infection in so many places that it feels rather hopeless to assume we still have plants that aren’t already infected. At the same time, we don’t have much choice if we ever want to have black raspberries again. The fungus doesn’t kill the plant, but there will no longer be any flowers or fruit.
Part of me wants to just let nature take its course since that’s how the multitudes of berry brambles showed up in the first place. Easy come, easy go, as they say. But Cyndie has been making the most delicious black cap jam from the bounty of fruit we were finding the last many years, I’m finding it hard to face the possibility that might come to an end.
I’m also lamenting the addition of the unexpected chore of hunting down and digging up the infected plants when there are so many other tasks needing attention.
One consolation I am going to cling to is the fact we have recently planted some red raspberry canes that our daughter, Elysa, brought from her house (originally transplanted from my sister, Mary’s plot!) and orange rust does not infect red raspberries.
I know Cyndie can make a worthy raspberry jam out of red berries, and I’m willing to adjust my desires out of necessity, but oh, that black cap jam was somthin’ else!
Dang orange fungus.
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Domesticating Wild
A number of our close advisors have provided insights on what we could do to tame the many wild raspberry patches that thrive on our land. Last weekend we finally made a first pass through the bramble that exists across the driveway from the house.
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In the four previous years since we moved here, we have simply harvested berries from wherever they appear. Some years the bounty was greater than we could keep up with and other years it has seemed a bit off. The hot spots tended to travel from one zone to another in any given season.
Navigating the tangle of thorns to reach fruit in the center of the patches was often difficult and hazardous. Since we never planted any of these wild raspberry bushes to start with, it doesn’t feel like we are risking too much to take a crack at cutting them back in hopes of encouraging some more orderly growth.
There’s no reason to think new patches wouldn’t just sprout up again if we accidentally destroy a current one. That’s the way they got here in the first place, thanks to the birds and nature’s way of doing things.
It seems realistic to me to expect that the trimming we have done may interfere a bit with the potential volume of this summer’s berry crop. Long term though, we think we will be cultivating better conditions for the plants. The ultimate result we are hoping for is improved berry production and a more enjoyable process of picking them.
Raspberry jam, anyone?
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Berries Appearing
Looks like the raspberries are happy with the weather we’ve been having. The bushes are everywhere here.
Hey, Mary, we can have a contest to see who gets the most berries! Our problem will be that the raspberry bushes are spread across much of our acreage, not contained all in one location. I fear the birds will have had their way with them long before we get a chance to hunt them down and harvest.
We also noticed quite a sizable patch of wild strawberries growing in our pasture. I’m told they don’t bear large fruit, and won’t be as sweet as the cultivated ones that are sold in stores. We’d love to add them to our bounty, but I suspect it will be hard to beat the wild critters roaming the grounds, to getting them.
Last night, the frogs – or a frog – were/was so loud that it got almost obnoxious, so Cyndie stepped out the door to the deck and hollered at them/it and clapped her hands. Silence erupted, for a few minutes, anyway.
We have high hopes to get a lot done today, but rain may once again spoil our plans.
I expect the berries will all be just fine with that.
Relative Something 