In article ,
Ann wrote:

Jan Flora expounded:

I haven't *seen* a pine barren, but I read John McPhee's
book about the NJ Pine Barrens... (Everything he writes
is good, btw.)

Our home up in Maine is in a pine barren. We've got about 2 acres in
wild blueberries. Because hubby is no longer up there fulltime we've
got some invading plants to deal with this fall, he's purchased a DR
Brushcutter to take things down. From what we've seen at neighbors'
homes, if you mow the blueberries they seem to come back with a
vengence, that's what we're hoping!

We have a few wild blues growing around the ranch. Mostly,
the bears beat me to the berries, and mostly, I'm willing
to let them.

The birds do get some of them, but there's so many I get a great
harvest every year....well, except for last year, when it rained for
the whole spring and early summer, pollination was poor and the crop
was bad basically for the whole state. We've put three beehives up
there, hopefully the girls will give us a good harvest. They're not
quite ready yet.

We have lots of wild highbush cranberries and lots of
wild and tame currants here.

I'd love to grow currants, but we're not supposed to, they're the
alternate host for some pine blight (

Yep, the tree catalogs have warnings about white pine blight or
something. I guess it's illegal in places to grow plants that will
support/harbor the blight.

We don't have pine trees here. (Wish we did.) Just black spruce,
white spruce, Lutz spruce (a hydrid of the two others), some
birch and some cottonwoods. A couple of kinds of aspen grow
about 80 miles north of here. Gotta get a couple of them...

Jan