How to Pick Blackberries in Your Yard

First, buy a property that's been allowed to grow wild for some years.  Then, become overwhelmed with moving, writing, parenting and life for a year or so, and ignore the problem. In early spring, when you notice that the blackberry patch has encroached on your ability to reach the compost pile behind the barn, take a pair of snips and hack down a lot of the canes.  Cut anything that's dead, or in your way or leaning over. We'll call that pruning.

Ignore the blackberry patch further. Don't use any commercial fertilizer, don't bother with mulch, and don't stake up the plants.  This style of cultivation is called uber lazy hyper organic.

When the plants flower, take a few pretty pictures, wave to the bees and other little pollinators and step aside. It's okay to actually curse the blackberry plants a little bit.  You'll want to, because they spring up in your tomato garden, in your driveway, and even through the boards of your deck. They are weeds, and they have thorns.

When beautiful black purple fruit matures, put on old clothes. I literally used a tee shirt from my rag pile. Choose long sleeves even though it's hot outside, because it's better for those thorns to prick your shirt than your arm. Don't forget socks.

It's so quiet where I live that when I put my little cardboard quart container on the grass, I can hear the little blades bending underneath its weight.  Pick only the darkest berries (this photo is pretty but somehow makes my berries look underripe, which they are not.) And if a berry looks tight and skinny, leave that one until tomorrow too.

Pick every day.  Eat.  Enjoy.

The War Against the Japanese Beetles

This is a Japanese Beetle, pictured on my rose bush.  Destroying my rose bush.  Let's not mince words.  I'm the enemy of the Japanese Beetle.  When the first few arrive, I put on my tough, rubberized gardening gloves and carry around a tub of soapy water.  I pluck the beetles off and toss them in.

The soap bubbles serve two purposes--the soap breaks the water's surface tension, so the beetle cannot simply float to the side and escape.  Secondly, the foam hides the beetle's struggle from me, and I don't feel quite so bad about being the instrument of death.

I took a class this weekend at the wonderful Cedar Circle (Organic) Farm in Thetford, VT.  They use a little hand-held vacuum cleaner to remove beetles.  Their other trick is to spray--every couple of years--a nematode around the base of the most affected plants.  They do this in late summer or early fall, after the beetles have already laid their eggs in the soil.  The nematodes, which are tiny worm organisms, will prey on the beetle eggs, and they'll never hatch in the spring.  I'm going to have to investigate.

Life is a Half Cup of Cherries

Go ahead and chuckle if you wish.  My first sour cherry harvest fills half of a generous latte cup.  But I couldn't be happier.  These aren't wimpy, grocery store cherries.  These are the sour stuff of pies, like the ones grown in Michigan where I grew up.

My husband is allergic to stone fruits, the poor man.  And my children will eat anything, so if I want to have any cherries, I have to make sure they don't sound attractive.  "Hey kid. Want a sour cherry?  No?" More for me.

One of the reasons we moved from our beloved New York City to the Vermont / New Hampshire border was for the pleasure of growing some of our food.  My husband planted the cherry tree (and forty or so of its fruity cousins) for me last year.  The trees are infants, so I got only a handful last year, and my little tree should give me a couple of pints this year.  Some day, I'm told, we'll be up to our ears in apples, plums, pears, blueberries, etc.  

What I take away from this experiment is this: we are obviously never moving again.  Watching my husband dig all those holes, haul truck loads of manure around our property in a wheelbarrow, patiently water every tree during their toddler years... I'd have to pry him off this property with a pitchfork.

Hopefully, I won't want to.