----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 9:04
AM
Subject: [NAFEX] (NAFEX) Temperate berry
crops
Bill, You forgot to mention blueberries or
blackberries in your list. There are thornless blackberries that would
be easier to get along with than the thorny ones, and would probably produce
more than grapes. Are you in one of the areas hard hit by Japanese
beetles last summer? If not, they are probably headed your way, and they
make it very hard to keep any leaves on grapevines. I've just been
reading up on blackberries, ordered 4 kinds last year and am wondering about
more, so here are some quotes from an article published in Texas:
" What plant is practically immune to the problems of insects and
disease, yet produces one of the best jelly, jam, juice, pie, cobbler and wine
fruits known to man?"
"As a boy hunting in the woods of Tennessee, I never thought that I would
someday praise those thorny culprits that tore my clothes, ripped my flesh and
taught me to curse proficiently. But the blackberry is probably the easiest to
culture, most productive, most versatile fruit in existence. These claims are
easily substantiated when one considers the vim and vigor of wild plants that
receive no culture."
There is little I can add to this except to say
that in Tennessee's hot humid climate with it's treacherous spring frosts
and wretched soil, that the one fruit that can be depended on to bear is the
blackberry. So far after 12 years of planting on sterile red clay and
trying to improve the soil, I have picked 7 apples, about 30 pears, quite a
few curculio riddled plums and peaches in the two years that didn't have
a late freeze (one of those years I sprayed Surround till I was sick of doing
it, but the rain kept washing it off), a gallon or so of rabbiteye
blueberries, a few handfuls of black raspberries, and uncountable gallons of
wild blackberries. Those blackberries grew and produced abundantly on
unimproved red clay with no assistance of any sort on our
part.
The fellow I quoted above
failed to mention that carefully selected blackberries are among the most
delectable fruits one can eat. I learned to pick only the ripest,
plumpest fruit, and day after day for weeks each summer I'd go out and pick
enough to give us a treat. We'd crumble graham crackers in our bowls,
pile in the berries and mash them with our forks. Then we'd stir in
cream cheese or sour cream or yogurt, or sometimes homemade wine in
addition to the dairy or instead of. This works for just about any fresh
fruit. (Probably not for blackcurrants, from what you all are
saying.)
I learned to wear minimal clothing and no socks
to do the picking, as it seems that chiggers like fuzzy stuff to cling
to. I had almost no trouble with chiggers that way.
Eventually trees, rust, anthracnose and virus reduced the free bounty, though
there is still usually enough to fill our bowls. I'm just not
getting the kind of surplus that allowed me to make gallons of wine in years
past. Sooo, I got smart and ordered some rust and anthracnose resistant
varieties of tame blackberries and am looking forward to them. That was
just last year, in a drought, and the plants didn't grow much, so we'll be
mostly dependent on the wild ones again this year. These are the
kinds I ordered:
Thornless Apache and Arapaho: both highly
resistant and highly praised. One of them displayed nice reddish
foliage for the fall months.
Thorny Kiowa and Chickasaw: ditto on resistance
for both. Kiowa crops for 6 weeks, and Chickasaw is supposed to be
the most heat and drought resistant, which it looks like we are going to be
needing.
I didn't order Triple Crown, which has received
rave reviews in this group, because Simons Berry Farm didn't have it, but it
doesn't seem to be noted for disease resistance. The one drawback to all
the wild berries around us is the big disease pool ready to invade our tame
crops. So resistance was my primary consideration, as I have seen how
much disease has damaged the wild
plants. Donna
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