Pavel314 wrote:
On Tuesday, July 15, 2014 3:03:47 PM UTC-4, Terry Coombs wrote:
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 well , I
actually stood

in the road talking to the new neighbors for about 3/4 hour 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 for power poles , they keep the trees 30 feet away from
the lines

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 !

--

Snag

I guess tending wild fruit patches

counts as gardening ...

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

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
blueactually low bush huckleberries , 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 .

--
Snag