2018 berry plant progress and harvest report

Northblue is getting closer. This is perhaps my favorite and most productive variety. My bushes are still small. This guy has given me something every year since planting and slowly continues to get bigger.

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My Elliot looks to be around the same stage. How many more weeks from there? Does it depend on the variety?

How big were the earliglos you picked? All of mine from 2nd year starts produced small berries. Super tasty but on the small side.

Premier and powder blue should be ripening in a couple weeks.

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Where did you get that netting. I need to enclose an area around thirty feet long, five feet wide and six foot tall. I can’t find netting that will cover this.

It’s from American netting and was highly recommended by several folks on the forum. It’s a bit pricey but super high quality.

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Northblue usually comes in around June 13.

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Medium size

I’ve grown EGs before, and they tend to start out with decent-sized berries, but the later ones get smaller

Check out American netting. They have several different lengths. I ordered a 3030 and a 1515 this past winter, not going to need it though. Not enough fruit to cover.

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That’s American NettingS, I think

There are two different companies with similar names

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You are right. S in the end.

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2 observations on my berry crop this year.
#1, Over the winter I lost more raspberry canes than I ever have before (started patch in 2012), probably at least 80% across multiple varieties. Also, much less vigorous shooting up of primocanes than in the past. At first I thought maybe it got too severely cold before there was much snow cover but then I noticed that canes that were growing in areas where there haven’t been raspberries very long survived very well. I’m thinking I need to more aggressively thin my primocanes, I tend to leave too many because I love that nice fall crop but I think they end up fighting each other too much for resources and poor winter cane survival is the result.
#2, We have about 10 Red Lake Currants, 5 we got at the nearby big box store, the others were mail order. The 5 locally bought have much bigger berries while the mail order ones have much smaller berries. We’re talking like 3 times the size. The plants look the same, berries taste the same. We just figured one group might just be a different strain of red currant. Then I was watching a youtube video about plants that do well in the shade, I think it was MI gardener, he mentioned currants like shade and actually get bigger size berries when grown in the shade. Has any one here observed this? Our tiny berry producers are all in much sunnier locations than their counterparts. I divided off about 8 new plants from them and planted them in shadier area’s, it will be interesting to see if berry size improves.

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Yes,from what I’ve read,Elliot is a very late one,sometimes going into the Fall.Brady

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Patriot Blueberry…first to ripen

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All blueberries now in one row.

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Osage Blackberry - the earliest (almost) to ripen this year.

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I built covers for my strawberries this year. Raccoons have been a bigger problem for me than birds. Last year they climbed up on my nets and kind of smashed the ripe berries through the net in order to eat them. These are strong enough they can’t smash them down, and tied down to the beds so they can’t raise them up. So far it’s working!

The taller cover will fit over my blueberries after the strawberries are done.


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Nice haul of strawberries, Doug. What variety are they? Looks like a pretty big berry, on average.

Wow those coons sounded serious! Knock on wood, they don’t seem to be an issue here, just deer mostly.


I’ve been picking about a pint a day for the past week, but the more varieties are ripening to increase the harvest. It had been mainly mara des bois with sparkle just starting to make a strong show.

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My Sunshine Blue Blueberries are starting to ripen and they are loaded very low maintenance plant.

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