The Happy Berry 2013 Newsletter Your Fruit Connection If you would like to be added to our email list please contact us . Typically the newsletter will be short and come out weekly during the harvest season [June to August] to let you know what is happening. It also comes out once or twice in off season. **************************** updated 6/5/2013 Opening Day - Wed June 12! Blackberries - We are now forecasting Wednesday June 12, 2013 for blackberries. They are starting to show a little color so I am pretty firm on this date. The first variety will be Natchez. It is thornless. I have also noticed a few shiners in the Kiowa blackberries. Blueberries – I believe they should be ready about June 25, 2013. In previous years we have started on June 15. The ample moisture this spring has meant there has not been any stress during cell division and first swell… and we are looking at some really big berries in both the black and the blue berries. The challenge this year has been to keep up with the grass and the weeds. We are guessing that the seedless table grapes will start in mid July. Figs will be August 1 and we have not seen that date change in all the years we have been growing figs. The same can be said of the muscadines…mid August for them. For those of you worried about global climate destabilization like us, we have added an electric car charger for plug-in electric cars. Initially there will be no charge until we see what our costs are. We have also added a bicycle rack for those that are going really low carbon. We see it as the responsibility of farmers to sequester more carbon than we use in growing the crop- including fuel use, and the fossil fuel used in making fertilizer, the nitrous oxides (a global warming gas) formed with fertilizer mineralization and other carbon supplements. To this end we are switching to using winter annual legumes to fix nitrogen and cycle other nutrients and adding pine trees in east-west rows to increase the depth of carbon fixation. The sun goes over east-west so there will be less impact of shade. We have been lucky enough to get several more acres of land that adjoins us so we are over 21 acres now. Perhaps you have noticed us clearing land when you come down the drive way. We are happy to report that our test planting of seedless persimmons (Izu) is doing well. We have also planted olive trees. The varieties are Mission, Ascolana and Pendolina. We observed fruit rachises this year on May 10 and flowers on May 22, 2013. The jury is still out on whether we can do it but… nothing ventured, nothing gained. Our summer employees this summer will be Nathan Melcher a rising sophomore at Clemson, Lukas Korbelik an intern from the Czech Republic, Tommy Delloroso and Jessica Pilgrim recent graduates from High School and Ruth Rollins. Ruth and Tommy were with us in 2012.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:38:11 +0000
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