A Berry Fruitful Morning

[Terry Coombs]

Another gallon of blackberries in the freezer , and I only lost a couple ounces of blood and gained a handful of chigger bites ... What I expected to be an hour and 3 pints or so turned into 3.5 hours and over a gallon of berries . I waited 3 days this time to pick , which it turns out is a mistake . Too many over-ripe berries , pluck one and another falls too . And I sure ain't diggin' around in the weeds for a few berries , there's bugs and snakes and stuff down there ! So from now until they're gone it'll be every other day . And of course I'm not picking it all , the birds and other small critters get their share . After all , they're the ones responsible for us having the plants all over . Speaking of all over , I noticed today that we have new canes growing in areas that were bush hogged year-before-last by the utility company in their easement so next year there'll be more places to pick . This year has been a banner year for wild fruit , we've had just about the right mix of rainy and sunny days . The blackberry patches are still covered up with unripened fruit . I expect to harvest at a minimum another 4-6 gallons over the next few weeks . And if all the muscadines on the vines make it to maturity , we'll be havin' all kinds of fun makin' wine , jelly , and my wife has a great juice recipe . I may have to buy another freezer for what we won't have time to process/room to store !

[Pavel314]

Where are you located? We had almost no berries in our area last year, Maryland north of Baltimore, but there were a lot of unripened ones on the bushes last weekend. I hope we get enough this year to make jelly, wine, or both.

Paul

[Terry Coombs]

I'm in Stone County Arkansas , north central part . Last year was dismal here , nowhere near enough rain . This year we've had rainy then sunny then more rain , in just about the perfect mix . I finally gave up on getting any blueberries , the critters eat them as fast as they ripen . The 3 blackberry patches I've been working all have enormous quantities of unripe berries , and I'll be out there again today to pick . Every other day seems to work best . I haven't had to water my garden at all this year and everything is just bustin' out - some of the tomato plants are nearly 2 feet over the 5' cages , and all are loaded . We've got over 70 strawberry plants now from the original 14 I planted , and so far I've managed to save seed from bok choy and spinach for a late summer planting . Lettuces haven't made seed yet , but I'll be harvesting that too .

[Pavel314]

The blackberries finally ripened up here. I thought there would have been m ore and larger berries with all the rain lately but it was more of an avera ge year. Also, the berries seem to be ripening in phases, with only about 1 /3 to 1/4 of the berries on a bush ripe and black at a time.

[Terry Coombs]

Pavel314 wrote:>

These have been ripening in stages too , and I've been out picking every other or 3rd day . These are about to play out , I might get one more picking , possibly 2 .