Let’s Go Picking By Tim Armstrong
What can give you 5-10 lbs of berries per year, can live for over 40 years and can cost less than $20? Our friend the blueberry of course! According to healthline.com blueberries are low in calories but high in nutrition, the king of antioxidant foods, may help protect against aging and cancer, protect cholesterol bood damage, can help maintain and improve memory function and more. Blueberries in the backyard are a good fit because blueberries are native to North Florida. According to Gerard Krewer a longtime University of Georgia researcher North Florida and South Georgia were very instrumental in bringing these wild blueberries out of the woods and helping create the big, sweet berries you know and love. The plants are acid loving and will grow anywhere azaleas thrive. Mulching once or twice a year with fine pine bark mulch seems to make them happy and keeping them well watered especially the first year after planting. At our farm we grow blueberries in the ground as well as big 30-gallon pots. We have found that companion planting with strawberries works well as they both like some of the same conditions. This time of year brings great excitement to growers like myself because it brings strawberries, mulberries, blueberries and blackberries into season one right after the other with tons of overlap. Strawberries can tolerate this cool spring weather and are always first to give us fruit. The little plants are easy for backyard growers. Usually, you plant them in early spring and get berries your first year. Chandler and Sweet Charlie are two of our Agriculture
Extension Office recommendations that we grow and sell. I don’t know of any Mulberry you pick farms but a walk around any of the older neighborhoods and parks should reward you with their delectable treats. I think of these as being the most bullet proof of all our back yard fruit trees in North Florida. They are another native and the varieties range from the dwarf variety that only gets 15-20’ high to the standard black that can get 30-40’ tall. Nothing like watching kids enjoy the fruitful mulberry season. On our YouTube channel we have a video of a young friend at the farm sharing our not-so-secret mulberry cobbler recipe! Mulberry leaf tea has been used in Traditional Chinese medicine for many health concerns. We have tried this tea at the farm many times and find it a pleasant green tea. From April to July we heat up the oven for blueberry cobbler, blueberry crumb cake and muffins . Also pancakes, ice cream and so many more favorites. You can see why there’s lots to love! Blueberries come in two main families. Highbush which are our early variety, March to May and Rabbiteye which come in typically May to July. And yes, they do like to be planted with a friend, a different variety of the same family, this helps with improved pollination. We sell both varieties at our farm. Backyard growers should look for a sunny well drained spot to plant these and give each plant about a 4’ by 4’ by 5’ high area for these to grow. For spacing we like about 4-6 feet between the plants They go dormant and lose their leaves in winter but return in spring with the flower 16
