Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] oh no! The blackberries too!!!

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] oh no! The blackberries too!!!
  • Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:30:28 -0500

Any of you down in the south who think the wild blackberries are fine, think again. I was looking at my Kiowas, which were further along than the wildlings, pulling off buds and slitting them with my fingernail to try to find one that wasn't black inside. After that I started in on the wild ones. I pulled some 30 buds and found two that had been viable. Since the freeze I have been thinking that at least we'd have the wild blackberries this year. This is going to be even harder on the birds than I thought. Does look like the dogwood berries may be alright though. I'm not going to go chop the blackberries because many of the buds look like the anthers will be fine, so at least the bees will be able to get some pollen from them.
Many of our strawberry flowers were damaged in the freeze despite being double covered, and now we've had a couple of frosts that I wasn't home for so more are black in the middle. Strangely enough, there were wild strawberries in the open during and since the freeze that have had viable centers. I'm wondering if some of these would be worth crossing to carry better bud hardiness. I'm not likely to be much use at something that long term, but the plants could easily be dug and shipped to someone else.
I do get the impression of a shortage of blooming plants right now. There were 5 big bumblebees working a small patch of purple deadnettle this morning, bees that normally would have been busy cheating on our blueberry patch. Yesterday a male hummingbird tried to work the same worked over patch, and then came over and tried pretty hard to find something to eat on my orange shirt.
And the good news is that a few blueberries were undamaged, though whether there will be enough to be worth picking, (or whether I'll feel justified in keeping the birds from them when they have nothing else to eat), I don't know. Donna




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page