Scare Tape, Berry Health, Wee Little Bee Jobs..

Our “Ag Manager”, Shellie Milne, likes to write, I think, even more than I do, and she loves farming, bee-keeping, and helping us find ways to keep the trees and the crops in good shape, so we thought we would share one of her recent internal farm updates..

July 9, 2019…

I am including Sheri – since I am sure that she gets plenty of questions.

The bees are buzzing and happily pollinating – I am like a weird parent that takes tons of pictures because I am so proud of them doing their wee little bee jobs – so please excuse the Carolyn Applebee side of me.

The strawberries are doing well in the new patch – the next “round’ of flowers and buds are coming on nicely and they are just as pretty as could be.

The 3rd large strawberry field is really waning – to the point that is producing more weeds than berries.  It is more than frustrating to Mario – so I have cleared it with Jim – and we will be plowing it under and planting it as soon as we can get the supplier to send us the berries.  It is my belief (and hope) that we can get the new plants to start producing by mid to late September – and it will be glorious next spring.  I will have an update from the supplier as far as delivery times by tomorrow.

The Olallieberries are doing well and we should have a good amount for U pick – even the ones that are not “quite” ripe – are still yummy.  The other blackberries are coming along with their flowers – though – if we go by their performance last year – I am not excited because they were far below par – but we will see – I changed the fertilization schedule to concentrate more on the berry health and stamina.

The Raspberries are flowering beautifully and the bees are all over them.  While raspberries are self pollinating – they need the pollination for healthy and beautiful fruit – not to get too nerdy – I think this states the necessity for the pollination the best:

“To understand how poor pollination can result in misshapen fruit, it is important to view the nature of the raspberry flower.  The flower is composed of 100-125 pistils, to which the pollen must be transferred to create a mature seed and the druplet surrounding the seed.

Around 75-85 druplets compose a raspberry fruit and each individual druplet has the same structure as a plum, cherry or peach.   If each and every one of these druplets is not pollinated, the overall integrity of the fruit is compromised.  This is because the immature druplet stays small, does not contribute to the structure and strength of the whole, and the resulting fruit is misshapen and crumbly (i.e. falls apart easily).” –Mark Bolda

We have scare tape (the silver tape fluttering around the crops) is working well and Mario said that it has definitely kept the birds out of the berries.  He needs to put more up in the corn and pumpkins – but it is helping there – but could be better with more put up.

The main pumpkin field was planted Tuesday and Grandma’s field will be planted this weekend thru Monday.

Categorised in: U-Pick

This post was written by Jim Riley