[NAFEX] blueberries and, sigh, one more comment on orchard ladders
Alan Haigh
alandhaigh at gmail.com
Wed Jun 4 10:30:34 EDT 2008
The main debate on blueberry flavor is usually between the wild lowbush
blueberries and the domesticated highbush (not that highbush don't exist in
the wild). I really think the variations in flavor should not be the
primary motivation in highbush cultivar selection, for most, the differences
aren't that pronounced.
Consider yeald and time of harvest (early, mid and late season) and perhaps
the size of the berry. Personally I like the largest ones because it takes
less time to pick more and those huge berries sure impress the neighbors. I
don't think size leads to blandness incidentally and neither do my
neighbors. Believe me, once the plants are well established harvesting is
time consuming.
In my zone 6, I recommend Duke and Patriot for early, Berkely and Bluecrop
for mid and most importantly, Elliot for a great delayed crop. Hartmanns
carries these and many others including Bonus which they claim produces the
worlds largest blueberries. They are big!
In Neils 2nd response to my ladder advise he suggests that 3 legs can be
more stable than 4, a point I won't bother trying to debate but he suggests
that his tri-pod is more time effiecient because of time wasted stablizing a
loose leg, and that's just plain wrong in my experience. I actually only
have to shimmy a leg very rarely on ground that is extremely sloping in more
than one direction. In all the scores of orchards I manage I only have to
shimmy a leg a few times a year. Because the Little Giant system allows you
to walk up one side and down the other it vastly increases range
between moving the ladder so you spend a lot less time getting off the
ladder and moving it. This makes my work much more efficient.
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