8
Advice WantedAny ladies here have experience growing plentiful berries?
I’m growing blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries (don’t worry, none of them are anywhere near each other). I’ve grown them in the past but have always gotten frustrated by the poor yield and ripped them out 😬 I found that, if I let too many berries grow, the quality of each berry would be subpar (not sweet enough, too small, just meh), so I wound up snipping off almost ALL of the flowers so that I could be guaranteed just several delicious berries.
I feel like it’s not supposed to be like that. Shouldn’t my bushes be capable of producing decent amounts of high-quality fruit? For example, my mom has never had to prune any of her tomatoes off the vine so that a few may grow big and sweet; we can get hundreds of cherry tomatoes off of a single plant, and they always taste great.
So what am I doing wrong with my fruit bushes? I shouldn’t have to be snipping off 90% of the flowers so that 10% can become decent berries. I always amend my soil well before I plant any sort of edible - my soil is well-draining, rich in organic matter, and fertilized with Espoma Berry-Tone. I water well until the plants are established.
What am I doing wrong? I want lots of delicious berries, not a handful of crap berries plus two or three decent ones.
I never prune my strawberries. The yield can depend on different factors. Fx last year my yield was small and meh, but that was probably a lack of rain. This year we have plenty of rain and my strawberries are great. Also, be careful not to fertilize strawberries too much. Fertilize in autumn and that's it. Some say it's best to renew the plants every third year. It might also be the variety you don't like. You could try a different variety.
Edit: I also recommend gooseberry bushes. They produce like crazy after a few years and you don't have to do anything.
I use store-bought fertiliser, specifically ‘Incredicrop’. I use the flower version (‘Incredibloom’) for my flowers too. A dose once in spring seems to work just fine.
Are your plants getting enough water while growing the berries? Enough sunlight?
Yeah I water them every day or every other day depending on how wet the soil looks from the top. My rule of thumb is to direct the shower from the hose at each plant and count to ten. They definitely get enough sun, too, especially the raspberries which are in direct sun pretty much all day. I noticed that at least one of them looks as though it has a lot of stem and leaf growth above the area with the most berries. Should I snip this off so the plant can focus on the berries instead of vertical growth?
If you are talking about raspberries, they should only need to be pruned after harvest. (The 2 year old branches that will die anyway).
Don't compare your Mums cherry tomato crop to your berries; cherry tomatoes are F1 so have hybrid vigour! Plus your soil might be rich in organic material but fruiting requires nitrogen, and if your compost is made from low nitrogen sources they might not be getting enough.
I looked at the nutrient values of Espoma Berry-Tone, and you might be better off using blood fish and bone, plus stale urine. Pee into a bucket, aerate it, store it in the garden and use it at the rate of 8:1 water:stale.
Stale urine? Please tell me you’re joking 🙃
Not at all - it contains ammonium nitrate. Its what they used before commercial fertilisers were available. You can add it to comfrey water as well.
What about just fish tank water instead? 😆
As long as you haven't used any chemicals like methylene blue you can use fish tank water on plants - some fish farms use aquaponics to clean the water and grow crops.
Berries are high maintenance
Your initial decision to walk away was probably correct
And if you jump through all manner of hoops and finally get a decent crop, then the birds are going to eat them
So then you have to net them, which means you cant get to them
I have a small gooseberry bush in a totally out the way spot
At some point in the summer it crops enough for a small pie
Grow stuff that fits your climate, your soil, and your willingness to engage
These days I grow but shrubs, but even they have to prove themselves...
Berries are high maintenance? Really? Compared to what? I thought they were low maintenance compared to fruit trees.
I mean,yeah, big strawberries are high maintenance, but I've been growing those small forest strawberries for ages, and they don't need much. (They don't reliably produce sweet berries, admittedly, but there's some decent ones there.)
And redcurrants survive everything (I had a bush for twenty+ years, it only died when I thought I should care for it more and fertilized it. :( ). Though I only use them for jam, so I don't need them to be sweet. (They don't tend to be, anyways.)