Berries

[littleminnie]

Do berry threads go here with the fruit trees?
Well as you may know I rent my land but I have done so now since 2008 so maybe I should go ahead and put in some perennials.

My boss always offers me raspberry canes and I have also thought about dealing with strawberries. There is one little blueberry on the edge of my garden in the weeds that just provides snack amounts and it took me two years to even notice it! LOL

Well I have never learned much about berries because I skipped over stuff I wasn't growing. So pros and cons on putting in raspberries and/or strawberries? Deer? I know I can cover the strawberries with FRC. Will the raspberries just get eaten by deer or not? Also what varieties of strawberries etc? I am a novice with berries I guess.
And if I do buy strawberries where is the cheapest place?

[12540dumont]

Minnie, IMHO, Mara Des Bois are my favorite. Nourse Farms are the best supplier I have dealt with. Berries, rhubarb and asparagus, elderberries, currants, they have everything.

Everything I bought from them was very very good. I lost 3 asparagus plants and about 4 strawberries. Considering that I bought 100, that's darn good.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I am also renting, but was getting to feel stable enough that I planted a row of strawberries last spring. I put in day-neutral strawberries so that I'll have a few berries to offer all season long. (Day-neutral is not the same as ever-bearing.)

Pruning raspberries seems like more work that I want to do. I let them grow wild in the yard without pruning, but I don't want them in the field. If I were to put in field-raspberries, I'd like to try fall-bearing so that I could simply mow the canes rather than pruning.

[atash]

Well I have never learned much about berries

OK, then excuse me if I tell you something you already know. I won't assume anything:

Strawberries are amazing. A plant that occupies no more than about a square foot of real estate will give you one or two handfuls of mildly sweet fruit rich in vitamin C, and if you grow everbearing strawberries you might get a few berries the first year.

"Everbearing" strawberries aren't usually truly everbearing. They bear typically twice a year, one crop around June, and one crop later in the summer. I do have one that is pretty darn close though, trickling out strawberries over a long season.

Strawberries are capable of growing in containers, which is often a good place for them. You need to keep them away from slugs, birds, and deer. You can grow strawberries in raised beds, pots, strawberry jars, or even hanging baskets. I squeeze them into several different places. You mentioned renting: strawberries are easy to transplant. You can take them with you!

In some parts of the country, domesticated strawberries need some protection in the winter. I've heard of people cutting them back and mulching them with straw. Not necessary where I live.

In some of the southern states, strawberries are short-lived and need to be replaced frequently. Actually, many of them will overcrowd with runners anyway, so once a year, remove any plants that have gone senescent and replace them with offsets, and transplant or thin out excess plants. Some recent cultivars produce very few runners.

Commercial varieties are usually but not always "Junebearers". For backyard crops it's nice to have "everbearers" so that you get fresh fruit over a longer time frame. The total amount of fruit is about the same; the difference the harvest season.

Seascape is a nice everbearing commercial variety. That's the one that makes one big strawberry (and several smaller ones) that is often sold at a premium in produce markets. I recommend AVOIDING the ubiquitous Tristar. The flavor is surprisingly good, but the plants are seriously lacking in vigor, and the leaves droop, which in my climate at least makes it easy for slugs and diseases to get to them.

If you are patient enough: seed-grown strawberries are significantly more vigorous than what you get from nurseries.

strawberryplants.org/2010/05/strawberry-seeds/

I am very happy with my seed-grown strawberries.

[templeton]

Atash, do strawberry seedlings take long to produce?

Minnie some of the brambleberries might also be worth having a look at.
T

[richardw]

Ive got a bit of experience with growing strawberries from seed.
It all started 6-7 years ago when i noticed a couple of tiny seedlings in between the rows of strawberries,so i potted them up.
The problem is the average gardener has been lead to believe that if you grow the non-heirloom/wild varieties from seed they will revert back and only produce small fruit,this message i'm sure has been pushed upon us so as to maintain the breeding industry and retail sells, so there for i was curious to see what would happen to the fruit size.
Second season i planted them out in the garden in spring and low and behold they grew lovely big fruit with great taste,so i decided to take 50 runners to use in the main strawberry growing area instead of taking the replacement runners from within.Following season those runners grew well and there fruit was of good consistent size and it was during later that summer that more seedlings germinated between the rows,this time i found the 50 needed to supply the annual replacement of old plants.
This is where things changed,the next season these seedling grown plants showed wide variation in both plant&fruit size so then i knew i had to start to rogue out so only the better plants cross pollinated.
Another generation of seedlings has followed and this is where i am up to at present.

This is my strawberry growing area,the yearly replacement rotates anticlockwise with garlic planted after the older plants have been removed,the plants (left bottom) have only just been planted and were a little root bound which is why they look a but yellow.



In this photo these plants are just over a year old and more rouging will need to be done before spring,the plants on the left will come out and a few runners from the plants on the right will be used as replacements otherwise there to much empty space .



One of the better sized fruits from summer just gone

[templeton]

Thanks Richard. I've got 2 or 3 commercial varieties growing that I was going to pull, maybe I'll plant them together and see if they cross up.
T

[Walk]

Hi Little Minnie,

In SE Minnesota, the June bearing strawberries do the best. We originally started with several varieties of plants from Jung's nursery in central Wisconsin. Jewel is the variety that did the best and is what we've been cloning from for nearly 20 years. We also rotate our strawberries with garlic - 4 beds, 1 with fall planted garlic. When the garlic is harvested, strawberry offsets are immediately put in its place and shaded for the first couple of weeks. We don't winter mulch the berries as they are hardy here.

As for raspberries, we have had the best results with Autumn Bliss, a "fall" bearer although it starts to fruit around the end of July and goes until frost in early October. The canes get mowed down after frost and that's it for pruning. After over 10 years on the current patch, we are starting to renew it by digging up part of it, and, resetting some plants. Annual mulch application has been all the fertility it's had. The patch has shade from the wood's edge to the west. There is a new variety called Autumn Britton? that some growers in our area like, but we haven't tried this one ourselves. Your growing conditions in central MN may be somewhat like ours, but we have ridge top silt loam soil, although our former garden site was in the valley and was sandy loam and at least 1 zone colder - probably more like where you are located.

[castanea]

A good source of eastern European strawberry seeds:

www.seemnemaailm.ee/eng/index.php?CID=21

[johninfla]

Any ideas as to which "grown from seed" strawberries would be good in a hot, humid area?

John

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Apr 17, 2012 7:49:25 GMT -5 johninfla said:

Any ideas as to which "grown from seed" strawberries would be good in a hot, humid area?

The ones that grow best in your garden.....

Plant 3-10 varieties of strawberry seeds or plants. Save seeds from the plants that do good in your garden, however good is defined for you. Plant the seeds and repeat for a few years, and you will have the best possible strawberry for your hot, humid area, or more specifically for your own garden.

[atash]

Atash, do strawberry seedlings take long to produce?

No. The seedlings typically grow away vigorously unless something's seriously wrong. I've gotten fruit from "everbearers" the same year; I don't mean a full crop, I mean a few berries. If Junebearers, expect fruit the next year, which is the same wait you would have buying starts anyway.

Either way still a bargain in terms of time, effort, and up-front cost, not to mention getting good virus-free stock. The fact that they are not all clones is a plus not a minus.

[MikeH]

We grow everbearing stawberries as well as honeyberries, raspberries (everbearing & June bearing), golden everbearing raspberries, thornless blackberries, black currants, gooseberries (first time this year), serviceberries, high bush cranberries, and a few blueberries. None are meant for anything more than our enjoyment. Having said that, we found that the everbearing strawberries produce a tidy little sum early in the season at market. Each spring we dig up all of the plants (it's a small bed), weed and compost the bed and then re-plant. We end up with twice as many plants for the compost pile as for the bed. One year, we potted them up and took them to market. Boy, did they sell! And if they're in flower and have small fruit, they sell even faster. The cost is zip and the time invested is minimal. Any that don't sell add to the compost pile. And we always have a few raspberry and black currant canes potted up as well. And orange ditch lillies do well - we grow them in 16' x 24" Rubbermade containers that we turn out in the spring so that we can subdivide and pot up. Some get replanted for next year so the cycle gets repeated. We like the Rubbermade approach since it keeps the grass and weeds out of the tubers and there's no digging involved so the plants are barely shocked when they are potted up. Again, the cost is zip. Any that don't sell, get planted somewhere along our road beyond the reach of the municipal ditch cutting maniacs.

Cut flowers are very fragile and don't last whereas hardy perennials, especially natives, seem to be popular. They can be taken to market a number of times until they sell or get planted somewhere along the road. People could start them from seeds for pennies or less if they harvest seeds but they prefer to buy plants for dollars. Who are we to tell them they're wasting money?

Regards,
Mike

[richardw]

Apr 17, 2012 11:31:07 GMT -5 atash said:

Atash, do strawberry seedlings take long to produce?

No. The seedlings typically grow away vigorously unless something's seriously wrong. I've gotten fruit from "everbearers" the same year; I don't mean a full crop, I mean a few berries. If Junebearers, expect fruit the next year, which is the same wait you would have buying starts anyway.

Either way still a bargain in terms of time, effort, and up-front cost, not to mention getting good virus-free stock. The fact that they are not all clones is a plus not a minus.

Yes Atash ,they don't take long,from when the seedling pops up in summer its producing a full crop 13 months later,

[littleminnie]

Should I start some strawberry seed now to plant out later or what? I am ignorant about berries.

So the raspberries aren't a bad idea right?