Berry plant and harvest report 2019

I have found them in black raspberries in the past…so probably late June last year. I’m a little late this year with ripening. I think they overwinter here at this point but i can’t be sure. I know MSU has some info on them. I have found them in sour cherries too. Haven’t checked yet, but i’m guessing blueberries are probably fair game. I have never seen them in apricots or any other stonefruit…yet.

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If damaged they will be all over it. Well if nothing else left for them to get into.

I’m in a newish (to me) house and planned the whole blueberry patch around SWD, with some berries expected to ripen in the SWD window but most expected to be before they show up. If they do show up early here like they are for you I might just rip out half of what I planted.

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MSU had this out a week or so ago…

This year MSU Extension is monitoring for SWD in 19 counties at 80 sites that include vineyards, sweet and tart cherry orchards, and blueberry, raspberry, saskatoon, and strawberry plantings. So far we have only caught SWD at 15 of these sites – these have all been either cherry or blueberry plantings, and no more than 5 SWD have been caught cumulatively at any given site over the last three weeks since we began monitoring. These sites are in the following counties: Allegan, Antrim, Berrien, Grand Traverse, Ingham, Leelanau, Macomb, Oceana, Ottawa, and Van Buren, which includes counties in all of the major fruit producing regions of Michigan.

Given how quickly this pest can reproduce and how devastating infestation can be, if your crop is at a susceptible stage, and you have begun to catch them in traps being monitored on your farm, a cover spray of an insecticide that is rated excellent against this pest should be applied to protect fruit and maintain populations at current low levels. Remember to rotate insecticide classes once you begin your spray program. Growers can determine how well their program is working by trapping for flies and sampling fruit using the salt test in the days prior to harvest.

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Seems the population is low right now like it has been in other years. Maybe they overwinter in your yard? If you have enough soft fruits so that the life cycle is never broken after they wake up, that could be it.

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I too have given up on fall raspberries that don’t have larve in them. I sprayed spinosad twice last year which I felt helped for a short time.

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This was talked about on another thread on here in the past but someone mentioned erythritol…a sugar as a potential spray/bait. I think i’ll get some and spray my blueberries with it. I have a lot of fruit this year…this pic from yesterday they are starting to color up nicely.

research looks very promising.
https://agresearchmag.ars.usda.gov/2017/feb/fly/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jen.12350

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We’ve been sampling some of our first Triple Crown blackberries, they finally are starting to ripen.

My first impression was that they were very juicy, and the taste was sweeter than the UArk berries. They also had an almost grape taste to me, and my wife concurred. Very happy with these, hope we’ll have more to sample before the varmits get to them.

Best tasting berry so far, even though we haven’t had any Freedom berries to sample yet. Thanks to @Hillbillyhort for gifting me these last year as little tip root cuttings.

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I still have a few everbearing strawberries pumping out a few berries. I had a medium size Quinault berry with at least 5 swd inside of it. To be fair it was overripe and super soft but the SWD will hit the strawbads…

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Over the past several days we harvested tge red currants (12 lbs), and about half tge white currants (24l lbs). Also harvested my hinnomaki red and Invicta gooseberries (24 lbs). Looks like I’ll be making a lot of jams this week. I have frozen raspberries, strawberries and honeyberries so I’m thinking about making some combo jams.

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Nice harvest there. How many plants did it take to make that, out of curiosity?

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Badger’s currants and gooseberries look under ripe to me. I like to let them hang a bit before harvest. Like on my Poorman gooseberry most fruits are green, with a few turning red, but I will not harvest till at least mid August. My Rovada red turns a super deep red when ripe, makes it easy. It is red for a few weeks before it becomes super dark.

I was not happy with any of my black raspberries for a few years. I have this one wild black raspberry from Ontario, but it is not black it is yellow, then turns brown when fully ripe. The taste is OK, not great. It seems to produce very strong floricanes as some of mine seemed to be winter damaged and some die before all berries are ripe. But that never happens with the Ontario brown cap. So I crossed Niwot with the Ontario brown cap. I got a nice primocane fruiting black cap with huge berries whose floricanes stay healthy So the cross also produces crazy sized canes that are 5- 6 feet tall. What a beautiful plant! It has been producing for over a week now. Looks like about another week for all of them to ripen. A primocane is crossing this picture and notice all the leaves look green. The floricanes stay very green, so many of my other cultivars struggle once floricanes. After they fruit the floricane looks terrible! These will not decline till long after fruiting is done. I do remove as soon as I have time to do it, once finished.
I’m replacing all my black caps with this new hybrid. I’m calling it “Linda”
Maybe other cultivars do better here, but Jewel, Niwot and Allen all had the problems I mentioned. Using a local (Ontario is 16 miles south of me) wild has given the plant the genes needed to thrive here. Plus I bet this one is very virus resistent. Black caps are usually very sensitive to viral infections, which I have considered is why the others did so poorly.

In the fruiting clusters usualy the center berry ripens first, and it is usually big. All of those were removed last week, these are the secondary berries I just picked.

My Niwot plant died on me, but I do have this hybrid that kept the primocane fruiting abilities. Not sure what the primocane berries taste like? What I’m showing are from floricanes. The primocane berries are now forming, still green.

Cane thickness of the primocanes is decent. This is at 4 feet up.

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Some if the Invicta gooseberries were small and underripe. However most all of them are being processed and made into jam and underripe fruit is better for that. Also I don’t want to deal with the thorns more than once so everything gets picked at the same time. The only gooseberry I have that I can eat more than a few fresh is black Velvet and I haven’t picked all those yet. Same thing with my currants. They all get processed so they all get picked at the same time. The pink underripe ones were mainly at the bottom and inside of the bush.

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The gooseberries are from 3 hinnomaki red and 3 Invicta. The Invicta bushes vastly out produce the hinnomaki red. Some are smaller and underripe but I harvest them all at once. The red currants are mainly for 3 bushes, I have 5 total but tell if them have been trampled by the dog until this v year when I finally got it fenced in. The whites are from 1 Primus (gallons) and 1 white pearl (1gallon). There is still 2 more primus and 1 white pearl to harvest.l, so if the amounts hold there is still 7 gallons to harvest.

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Triple Crown is like the Red Haven of thornless blackberries. You compare all other thornless cultivars to TC. My problem was they ripened during the height of SWD season. So I only grow western trailing raspberry-blackberry hybrids that fruit before SWD.

Newberry, these are one of the best! You can taste the raspberry in these. Top shelf flavor

Wyeberries, which are very closely related to boysenberry. These make the best jam!

Tayberries, these are very sweet and have a very unique flavor. Tones of strawberry in the flavor profile. Great for fresh eating or jam.

I agree, I pick them a little early for jam. I tun mine into syrup, but I like adding a few to my jam mixes. It’s not that they are bad, they are fine anyway as you picked them. I like to use my Poorman to sweeten really tart fruit in jams, so I let them hang maybe 6 weeks. Some cultivars will frop, you can’t do this, but Poorman holds unto berries very well. they will dry before they drop. taste like balls of sugar. Not taqrt at all at this stage. I have some very tart honeyberries and I like to use the Poorman to sweeten them up. Plus the combo is really good!

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I have one poorman bush but no fruit yet. When I do finally get some I’ll let them hang as you suggest. The hinnomaki reds are pretty good fresh but I can’t eat more than a handful or so. The Invicta produces like mad and the berries are ok, but the texture is kind of mealy for me, a great processing plant though.

As previously stated, I enjoy the black Velvet fresh and hopefully the poorman is similarly enjoyed fresh. I also have jahn’s prairie so I’ll see how that turns out. Hopefully, I’ll have my processing bushes and my eating bushes.

I could never get used to tayberries or Columbia Star. It took me a while to figure out why but it dawned on me…too sweet. I like flavor at least to my taste buds. So pulling my tayberries and taking out most Columbia Star as well. Going to increase newberry and kotata.

Yes I heard this and just added one this year. I rooted cuttings, I have a couple extra plants too.

I just added this one too. I have others also.
I’m more a fan of black currants and mostly grow them.

Aronia. I think these are ripe. They are softish and juicy and not very astringent. They will be frozen and save for winter smoothies.

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I’m on vacation in Santa Cruz CA and there are blackberry plants growing everywhere! I think mainly himalayan and pacific (local) trailing blackberries. While hiking in the nearby redwood forests, I got to sample some wild thimbleberries too. :slight_smile:

I did visit a farmer’s market in town and purchased three (3) half-pints of boysenberries (unfortunately thornless) to eat. There is a noticeable difference in the flavor from the thorny and thornless boysen varieties. My thorny boysen have more flavor. Olallieberries ripen here in May, so I missed those. Recommended to a local berry farmer that he try Newberry…would be something his customers would like. It was interesting that the only blackberries for sale at the markets where all Eastern varieties. There were Kiowa and a Prime Ark varieties for sale at the farmers market. While visiting UC Santa Cruz’s Farm, I noticed that they had Triple Crown planted and it was fruiting…so of course I had to sample a few to make sure to confirm the variety ;-).

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