What's happening today 2016?

Pot plants and stoned fruit - at least the descriptions sound like they belong together. :grin: :sunglasses:

9 Likes

You’re being naughty, Shorty!!:innocent::laughing:

1 Like

Life would be a lot less fun without a wide naughty streak and a sense of humor. :smile:

5 Likes

Bonus mid summer mulberries! :blush:

2 Likes

Looks like scab to me .
http://www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/disease_descriptions/omapscab.html

1 Like

Today is the deadline for apple budwood from Geneva ARS.

I thought they stopped sending it to just people

Where on the site can you order it?

Ahhh… Mine are for research and educational observation. I think if you go to Geneva’s homepage there is a pull down that gives grape, apple, and sour cherry catalogs.

I picked a bunch of boysenberries, and Columbia Star blackberries today. Both are very good. I almost pulled Columbia Star last year. It was bland and slightly tart. I figured out you need to let them stay on the vine 2 weeks or so after turning black! A great way to tell if blackberries are ripe is when the calyx starts turning yellow to full brown. this is when you want to pick them. they will only be good for a day or two. With Columbia Star when the calyx is over 50% brown they are perfect, and rather firm too, well relatively firm compared to other blackberries at this stage, they are soft. Boysenberries when this ripe often fall apart, shelf life is hours not days it seems. I pick daily and any leftover from yesterday are frozen. I grow a lot though here is today’s fresh blackberries, the bottom is boysenberry which you can’t see. the top is Columbia Star with a few black raspberries, the last of the year.

Natchez is starting to become ripe. I have been picking them for a few days, Huge berries!
More a traditional blackberry flavor, I don’t much care for though compared to the hybrids. And Columbia Star has the west coast flavor which is different from eastern blackberries.
Natchez


Next up is Navaho! None are ripe so far.

Chandler blueberry is starting to ripen and will ripen for the next month. A good choice for U-picks!
As you have about 6 weeks where it will have ripe berries, and the size helps. If blue around the stem, they are ripe, You can let them hang a long time too. Excuse the blackberry stained hand!

Liberty loves putting out berries! They are good too, but not as firm as others I have. Even though the plant seems over burdened (it is!) the berries are still really big!

10 Likes

Drew,
That’s good to know about about Columbia Star.The one or two I was able to taste were kind of flat.Looking to next year.Brady

Thanks, Drew. Just what I neded to know. :grin:

It was too hot for Columbia Star here, most were small. They were decent tasting but not great. A few berries in cooler spots were excellent. I don’t think its a berry for my climate, it also did not do nearly as well over winter.

Drew is there a way to tell the difference between boysenberries and regular black berries? Growing up with my parents they always called the wild ones boysenberries, but the neighbor says no they are blackberries.

Yeah it only took me 5 years to figure it out! The Columbia Star black for 2 weeks or more before ripe was messing with me! I noticed the calyx was brown on one of the berries and it was really good!! All blackberry cultivars seem to be somewhere between wilting yellow to crisp brown calyx, some are better yellow, some brown.

Yes, with experience of growing both you can tell. In zone 6 they are ripe right now. the wild blackberries here have a few weeks yet. Boysenberries do not turn dark black, they have some red even when dead ripe or rotten even.
I should have taken a picture of today’s harvest. Although this year’s crop is small berries, so not typical. They tend to be small in zone 6. Or I need to fertilize them more, or thin out primocanes better.

From Wiki:

In the late 1920s, George M. Darrow of the USDA began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on Boysen’s Northern California farm.[5] Darrow enlisted the help of Walter Knott, a Southern California farmer who was known as a berry expert. Knott had never heard of the new berry, but he agreed to help Darrow in his search.
Darrow and Knott learned that Boysen had abandoned his growing
experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted by this
news, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen’s old farm, on which they
found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They
transplanted the vines to Knott’s farm in Buena Park, California,
where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health. Walter Knott was
the first to commercially cultivate the berry in Southern California.[5]
He began selling the berries at his farm stand in 1932 and soon noticed
that people kept returning to buy the large, tasty berries. When asked
what they were called, Knott said, “Boysenberries,” after their
originator.[6] His family’s small restaurant and pie business eventually grew into Knott’s Berry Farm. As the berry’s popularity grew, Mrs. Knott began making preserves, which ultimately made Knott’s Berry Farm famous.

3 Likes

My Columbia Star is trellised North to South,facing West and gets midday to late afternoon direct sunlight.Right now there is a row of potted Blueberry plants,about four feet tall in front of the Blackberries,so maybe they will help vary the light intensity.
I had one Robin this year that raised havoc with my fruit and took a number of ripening ones.There may be a few more left though. Brady

The Bountiful Blues are plentiful this year,as the name implies.Flavor is fairly good and they are sugar sweet. Brady

7 Likes

I have a couple plants where it is near impossible to tell when ripe, blueberries that is. Also on Columbia Star, So I’m having a good year, seems some cultivars are inconsistent in flavor and such. You still may disregard the cultivar next year. I think I’m going to give up on the perfect berry and just concentrate on working with what I got. A little frustrated with getting unripe blueberries. or like with Bob, even getting a chance to taste ripe berries.

Wow…i love how easy blueberries are to grow. I really should up my game and concentrate more on them since the kids love them and they are easy to freeze for later use.

Michigan looks to have a bumper crop this year;

2 Likes

What did you list for your organization?

I’ve been sneezing quite a bit the last 2 days. The winds have been out of the south. Looks like my fall allergies are starting a little early. I hate ragweed.

2 Likes