Its grown up all around them but they are ready and tasting great. Will mow around them so I dont have to pick in the weeds. Last year the birds cleaned them out before I got to them.

You’re one upping the birds! Early bird gets the berries! Ya gonna make a pie?

No, but my wife may make something with them if any are left after the family grazing on them. All depends on the amount. If she makes something with loaded with carbs more than the natural berries like a pie the wife and I wont be eating it. The berries have more than enough sugar as it is. I will eat way to many is the problem. Blueberries and strawberries are a weakness of mine.

careful now the blue color may come through and you get call a Democratic supporter

Impossible they dont plant and pick their own fruit.

I need to get with Keith and get educated on propagating these and replace the ones in the rows we lost and extend the rows. I think we started with 26 but dont have that many left

Birds left mine alone last year. It'll be a while yet till mine are ready.

It's getting close to the time to propagate blueberry and other softwood cuttings. Take 4" to 6" inch cuttings from fresh, flexible new growth on your blueberry bushes. Remove the leaves from the lower half of the cuttings. Dip the bases of the cuttings in rooting hormone. Then stick them into a moist, but not super wet, 50% peat moss and 50% perlite mix. Keep the humidity high, with a clear plastic dome, but vent the dome at least once a day. Watch for mold. Keep the cuttings in bright shade, but not full sun.

If you use a heat mat and provide bottom heat at around 75F, the cuttings will callous and root more quickly. Expect roots to form in 4–8 weeks. Highbush blueberries should have a better than 50% success rate.

I'll be rooting large numbers of softwood cuttings, of named cultivars of hybrid hazelnut and pear, apple, peach, prickly ash, mulberry and Montmorency cherry in the second or third week of June

Keith

I never knew that apples, peaches, cherries, etc. could be rooted!

Horticulturally it is preferred to graft most of those species on a compatible rootstock for best results. Hazelnuts being an exception.

Apple varieties used for root stock root very easily. Other varieties of apples range from fairly easy to almost impossible. Pears likewise can range from easy to hard. I'm doing Bartlett, which should have a better than a 50% success rate. I had 6, out of a large number of Bartlett cuttings, root years ago, from just being stuck in a pot and occasionally watered.

Montmorency cherry is an easy cherry. I should get a 60% success rate out of it. It spreads readily by root suckers too. I have around 140 yards of ditch line with Montmorency cherries. I potted up suckers back in February. I cut them back hard when I potted them. I stuck the cuttings laying almost on their sides, with a little dirt on them, in a clump. Even sitting exposed, with almost no care, the cuttings are almost all alive. Even without rooting hormone, they still have decent callous and some have miniscule roots.

The trick is keeping high humidity and the root zone around 75F.

I'll stick a huge number of cuttings to cover failures.

Keith

Looking good

I also have some cherry root stock a friend gave me back in March. I believe it is Mazzard. It's in a large pot and is throwing suckers and growing quickly. It should root readily from cuttings. I might cut all the branches, except on one side and then plant it flat, so that it produces suckers from it's entire length. I can graft many varieties of sweet and sour cherries on the root stock from it.

A lot of growers lay entire root stock apple trees on their sides like that, buried slightly and produce hundreds of suckers to remove and graft onto.

Keith

Can you explain why that is?

A major advantage is you can select from hundreds of root stocks for how it does with specific soil types, amounts of precipitation, viral resistance, bacterial resistance, nematode resistance, fungal resistance and size control.

Hazelnut is more of a bush. You can train it to a single trunk, but it takes more work and maintenance because the root stock constantly throws branches to cut off.

Keith

My Grandmother made a blueberry cobbler that was crazy delicious!!!

My blackberries really coming on

I've read that there are a lot of health benefits to eating blueberries. Good for your heart and big time antioxidant properties, plus fiber.

Rootstocks usually out perform a clone on its own roots and can impart various desirable characteristics on the clone itself. As Keith mentioned some rootstocks are nematode, fungi and bacteria resistant. Other rootstocks perform better in heavier soils or sandy soils.

Although you can get a peach limb to possibly root it will rarely perform like if it had been grafted.

You will not find commercial orchards anywhere of Apple, Peach, cherry or plum as straight clones I dare say. Maybe on Keith's place?

Gray squirrels are my greatest nemesis when it comes to blueberries. They are far worse than birds and there is no shortage of them. They will strip a bush of the berries as they start to turn.