Black Raspberries Black raspberries are delicious and make great jam, but they will take more care than blueberries or red raspberries. To begin, black raspberries, sometimes called blackcaps, need a site that gets full sun, and has access to watering. In my own experience I have found that regular watering, two inches a week, is essential. I lost most of my first two crops because of the lack of watering. The berries were small and almost instantly dried…
Blueberries and raspberries are easy food crops that can save you money and are amazingly nutritious. Berries are expensive in the market because they require so much labor to pick, are perishable and need to be shipped quickly. Yet it does not take much time or trouble to go out a pick enough for a family. Blueberries I think blueberries are about the easiest berry to grow. Blueberries are hardy, a native plant that loves our acid…
Of all the August Bloomers, the Daylily Bank makes the biggest statement even though it has started to pass its peak. Other August bloomer are just beginning. The most notable in this photo is the classic Echinacea or coneflower, with Russian sage in front and pink and white phlox on the other side of the bed. The phlox is late, with light bloom, because the deer had been snacking on the buds. Only once clump of Paradise Blue…
Dr. Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, was the keynote speaker at the Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners Spring Symposium last week. His talk focused on the need for more insects to make our gardens – and the world – healthier and more ecologically balanced. “A mere 1 % [of all insects] interact with humans in negative ways. The other 99 % pollinate plants, return the nutrients tied up in…
Berries are the best. They are delicious summer fruits, especially when they are picked right off the bush and brought in for a morning bowl of cereal, a beautiful fruit tart, or a pot of jam. They are easy for the gardener because they are perennial plants and require little fussing over the years of their life. In Heath we pay a lot of attention to blueberries. One section of town is called Burnt Hill because the hillside…
It was Martha Stewart who first introduced me to winterberry, a native deciduous holly. Since it was Martha who pointed it out in an arrangement I thought it must be exotic, and not something I could grow. I was wrong. I did buy and plant five winterberry plants this spring, four female 'Winter Red,' and one male 'Southern Gentleman', but this photo is of a clump of winterberry growing by the side of the road. Those roadside shrubs…
When I walked through the garden the other day I realized how many red berries I have in the fall. Three years ago I noticed for the first time that my holly, ‘Blue Princess,’ and my cotoneasters had finally started producing berries. That berry production has gotten more prolific and beautiful each year. Hollies are dioecious plants, which means they need separate male and female plants to cross pollinate and produce fruits. While there are many holly cultivars…
As I was baking cranberry bread yesterday, I remembered an interview I did with Wil Kiendzior and his wife Louisa Sapienza about their cranberry beds. Cranberries are another perennial crop that can be added to your edible garden. Wil Kiendzior started gardening when two things converged in his life. His two daughters were born and he started teaching high school courses on ecology and the environment, using Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as a text. His first gardens grew…
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Elise Schlaikjer has named all the houses she has lived in Phoenix House, but when she moved to Greenfield, just two years ago, the name was especially apt. It took a fall and a head injury, but Schlaikjer decided that after 23 years in Michigan it was time to move nearer her daughter Laura, in Greenfield. At the age of 73 she was ready to start a new life, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, reborn and…