The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

In an attempt to avoid the heat, I’ve been getting out to work in the garden early in the morning every day this week.

A couple days ago, I heard a bird making a noisy racket up in a tree near one end of the garden. I walked over to see what all the fuss was about. Just as I neared the tree a blackbird flew out and landed in the other end of the garden, right near the spot I was working in.  It was where my blueberry bushes are located. Apparently, the bird was scolding me for being so near his breakfast.  Looking closer, I discovered it was the day the first blueberries ripened.

Without the help from a feathered friend, I wouldn't have nearly as many blueberries to photograph

Unbeknownst to him, the bird reminded me that it was time to cover the blueberries. All kinds of birds love blueberries. Once they discover where your blueberries are, they can wipe out your whole crop in a day.

I learned that lesson many years ago. At that time, I had about a half an acre planted. The fellow helping me neglected to protect the crop. I got a frantic phone call from him one day. He said that someone sneaked in overnight and stole all of the berries he was going to pick that day. He didn’t realize that a huge flock of birds found our blueberries and ate all of them. His thought was it would be nice to share a few berries with the wildlife since we had so many.

I have only a few bushes in my garden now so, it is easy to cover them.  I threw some row-cover material over the bushes and secured it with some clothes pins.  Row-cover material is light-weight and doesn’t press down the branches. Netting works fine too if you can devise a way to keep it away from the bushes. Otherwise the birds can pick the berries right through the net.

Light-weight row cover material works great if you have a small number of blueberries to protect.

This year, one bird’s greed helped me save my blueberry crop.

Bob

I checked my apple trees this week to see if there were any apples left after that freeze we had a couple of weeks ago. I found only a handful of small apples that looked like they could grow on to maturity.

Over 99 percent of the buds were frosted and subsequently fell off the tree. I found a few buds that were still hanging on but, once I touched them with my finger, they fell to the ground.

There are other small, growing fruits left on the tree but many of them are deformed. In those cases, the cold temperature killed only part of the bud. They will grow to maturity but will still be gnarled.

We have only a few trees — imagine having acres of trees and having to depend on them for your livelihood.

The question now is, do I continue to spray? I probably will spray a few times, just to help keep insects and foliage diseases in check.

Bob

One of the remaining jobs in my garden is taking care of this season’s old raspberry plants. Fortunately I have an ever-bearing variety planted.

Older gardeners will remember when most of the raspberries grown would be ripe for picking in mainly in the summer. To stretch out the season growers would have to plant an early, a mid-season and a late variety. By doing this they could harvest raspberries over a longer period of time.

The standard varieties of raspberry plants have two life cycles, the growing stage and the fruiting stage. During the growing stage no fruit is produced. When the second year rolls around the fruit is produced on those canes that grew last year. Once the raspberry patch has established itself, there will be growing canes and fruiting canes present at the same time. To confuse matters even more, once a cane has fruited, it must be removed. All of this detailed pruning must be done by hand one cane at a time.

It’s no wonder that a lot of raspberry growers have switched over to the ever-bearing varieties. Pruning is greatly simplified by growing those types. In this case all you need to do for pruning is to cut back or mow all of the canes within a couple of inches from the ground, rake them up and dispose of them. Using this method, you have one harvest that begins late in the summer and continues until fruiting is stopped by the fall frosts.

Cut fall raspberry canes just above ground level.

Some gardeners will mulch their patch after cutting back to protect the remaining raspberry crowns and roots from the winter temperatures. Usually snow cover will provide enough protection in Michigan.

Be sure you either burn the cut off canes or set them out for the trash pick up. Composting will not be effective in killing any disease organisms present in the prunings.

I have scanned an old bulletin for anyone who might be  interested in the finer points of raspberry growing.