Q & A: Fruit

Got a gardening question? Ask Susan! What follows are reader questions. Each time a new one comes in, I’ll add it to the top. To ask a question, drop me a note at Susan@susansinthegarden.com.

Q: Just bought two 8×10 cedar raised beds and have some good 50/50 soil mix. Was wondering if it’s best to plant my  4 strawberry plants (starts that my daughter divided from her garden) directly in my raised bed or in a container of some sort? Wasn’t sure if they would take over too much space in my raised beds?  Also I’m not sure when I can put my plants outside.  Right now I just have them in the house near a window. DS

A: I’m afraid the strawberry plants would definitely spread throughout your raised bed because it’s in their nature to send out lots of runners. I think your best bet would be to grow them in a container where you would have more control over them. You should be able to plant them outside in a week or two (mid- to late April).

Q: I have only 6 blueberry bushes. I planted them in 2007. They have been so prolific in the past 2 years, that it takes me 6 hours to pick them every 3 days in July and August. They are WAY too tall. Looks like some are 10 feet. Do I cut them down to a reasonable height? I used to since we used to put deer net over them in the late spring to protect them from birds. Last couple of years I didn’t decrease their height as we left the net off. Thank you so much for your pruning tips. MM

A: The type of blueberries I grow don’t get as tall as yours. But I don’t see why you couldn’t trim them back to a more reasonable height, provided that leaves plenty of fruiting branches for you. It certainly wouldn’t cause any harm to cut back one or two of the bushes this spring and then see what their production is like this summer. If it works well, I would cut back the others next spring. If it does dramatically affect your harvest, however, then I would either just trim them back to a height you can reach (i.e., 6′) and use a taller cover over them or, like you did the past 2 years, leave the cover off. Speaking of covers… what we have done is use floating row cover instead of bird netting because the berries get caught in the netting, so when you pull it off for harvesting purposes, the berries go flying! I used my sewing machine to sew together two long, wide pieces of floating row cover so it would be wide enough to cover our plants (which are 4-5′ tall) and reach to the ground, to keep the robins and other birds away. Just a suggestion.

Q: My wife and I are moving from Anchorage to our new house near Chattaroy in early January. Among our retirement plans is to put in a small orchard on our 5 acres. In addition to planting bare root or those small potted trees available at nurseries, I’d like to put in a few burlap-ball ASAP so we can have fruit this year. The nurseries seem to have only small potted trees or bare root. Do you know where I can buy 2-3 burlap balled apple or cherry trees? LB

A: It’s important to let fruit trees grow a at least a couple of years without producing any fruit. Why? If you let them produce fruit the first year, they will stop growing or it might affect future crops. It’s possible you might be able to find some larger fruit trees at a nursery like Gibson’s in Spokane Valley, but the best approach is to buy young, healthy trees either bare-root or potted, and let them grow without producing for at least 2 years. 
Here is some additional information from Raintree Nursery:
https://raintreenursery.com/plantcare/2012/12/faqs-when-should-i-expect-to-harvest-the-first-fruit-from-my-new-fruit-treeberries/

Q: A quick question regarding pruning raspberries… In the fall, can one cut back ALL canes or just specific ones? An old timer neighbor once suggested just cutting back the dark brown canes. Is there harm in cutting ALL canes – even at the risk of a diminished crop the falling year? JM, Spokane

A: If you cut all of your raspberry canes back, you will not get any fruit next year. Raspberry plants have 2 types of canes: floricanes (the ones that bloom and bear fruit) and primocanes (the new canes that come up during the current year and only have leaves on them — no berries). At the end of the season, or at least by late winter, you should ONLY cut down the floricanes. You’ll be able to tell which ones they are because you’ll see the stems where the raspberries used to be attached. Also, the stems of the canes are sort of a gray color and quite brittle. Leave the primocanes (which, again, only have leaves in their first year) in place, then they will bear for you next year. I did shoot a video on this topic in March. Here is a link to it from my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx813SZ-MLI

Q: I like the black cover on your lettuce patch (the bird netting). What kind of black tube do you use to support the bird net? I can use rebar with it.

A: The black tubing is recycled 1/2″-diameter drip tubing. It has worked well for us although sturdier hoops would be much better. Rebar would work great, also bent (metal) electrical conduit.

Q: My lettuce has turned bitter and inedible. Do you know a kind that will not do that? LW,  Spokane

A: I have found that different cultivars of Romaine lettuce are quite heat-tolerant. At some point, however, it just gets too hot for all types of lettuce and they bolt to seed. Consider also starting a new crop of lettuce in August to harvest this fall.

Q: I enjoyed your video on apple trees.  Where do you purchase the maggot traps?  MF, Central Wash.

A: If you do a web search on “apple maggot barriers” you’ll find several sources for them. We typically purchase ours from maggotbarriers.com (what a “lovely” name for a website, ha ha). You’ll notice there are regular barriers and heavy-duty barriers. In the past, we’ve always used the regular ones so have no experience with the heavy-duty barriers. However, this year, we exclusively used some of the latter on a couple of trees, just to see if we get better results with them.

Q: What is the best way to grow blueberries? MM

A: The most important thing you need to know about growing blueberries is that they really need to be in acidic soil. I wrote a column and shot a video about blueberries in April. Here’s a link to the related blog post, which contains both: https://www.susansinthegarden.com/2019/04/april-7-column-how-to-grow-blueberries/.

Q: I live in Lewiston, Idaho and I’m trying to find out what kind of fig trees might grow well in our region. I assume there are some that will do well and I would like to try to grow some. Do you have any recommendations? ML

A: Up until a couple of years ago, I figured there’s no way to grow figs in our zone 5 garden. However, we noticed that Burpee was selling some extra-hardy figs that are supposed to be hardy down to zone 5. We excitedly ordered two of them and planted them on the south side (outside) of our little greenhouse. After two winters, I can tell you this: yes, they do survive our winters, but the branches tend to die back which means the trees have to grow new branches each year, which in turn means they won’t produce figs. I have two friends who are also growing the same figs we are. They planted them in large pots which are kept outdoors during the spring, summer and fall, and then moved into their garage for the winter. Their figs are doing much better than ours have so we decided to dig our fig trees up and plant them in large pots as well. We have our fingers crossed that they will tolerate the winters better, not die back, and reward us with figs! If it sounds crazy to plant these trees in pots, something we’ve learned from the English gardens we visited last spring is that figs like to have their roots crowded. The two cultivars we are growing are ‘Chicago Hardy’ and ‘Violette de Bordeaux’. I’ve also heard that ‘Brown Turkey’ is a zone 5 fig.

 

Q: What sort of berries attracted so many Bohemian waxwings to your yard, and where can I get one? JH

A: The main plant they’re attracted to in our yard is American cranberry bush (Viburnum trilobum). I don’t recall where we bought them since it was ages ago. But they are native shrubs so I would try local nurseries that carry native plants such as Blue Moon Nursery (bluemoonplants.com), Smart Gardens (smartgardensnursery.com/), Desert Jewels Nursery (desertjewelsnursery.com) or Plants of the Wild (plantsofthewild.com) for starters.

Q: I am interested in your recommendations for blackberry plants. I live in zone 4. Thank you. LJ

A: My favorites are ‘Black Satin’ and ‘Triple Crown’, both of which are thornless and very productive. However, according to my research, it says they are hardy down to zone 5. You might consider buying just a plant or two and seeing how they do in your region. I don’t know of any hardier blackberries to try.

Q: Now that I had a great season of raspberries, what do I do?  Cut
them down to the ground? Can you help?

A: You could certainly prune your raspberries now or wait until late winter. You don’t want to prune all of them down, only the ones that bore fruit this year. Here’s a video of mine that explains this (along with other fall clean-up tasks): Fall Clean-up.

Q: I am desperate to find an organic way to rid my apple trees of codling
moths. This year, we lost our entire bumper crop of apples from four
trees to these insects. We have no leaf litter; I hung 25 plastic balls smeared with the Tanglefoot sticky substance purchased online, and put Tanglefoot paper bands around the trunks smeared with the sticky substance, all to no avail. Any suggestions? DC, Santa Fe, NM

A: In June, I wrote about what my husband and I do to grow our apples organically in the following blog post: Growing Apples Organically – 2017. However, I have some more recent information to share with you: A reader sent me a response to that post, indicating that she has been using codling moth attractant and has been getting about an 80% success rate of worm-free apples. She had asked if I thought she should also put on the nylon footies (refer to my blog post) to get 100%. My response to her was that if she’s only doing the attractant and getting 80% success, I wouldn’t bother doing anything else! So my husband and I have decided to try using the attractant as the only method of codling moth control on 1 or 2 of our apple trees next year to see how well that works. You can bet I’ll write another blog post about that! To learn more about apple codling moths, I have a new Organic Pest Control guide on my website. There is a page specifically on apple codling moths, to give you a good idea of their life cycle, etc. And there is also an information page on the apple codling moth attractants. They are homemade and one of the most important ingredients is molasses.

Q: I planted five plants in a 12 foot x 4 foot raised bed last year, ten
inches high.  This year they are growing out of the base ground around
the bed.  Why do they grow down, and move away from the bed and
reemerge in the gravel walk?  Darn plants anyway.  I am cutting them
at  the ground level outside of the bed to control them but I do not
know if that will help. SS, Spokane

A: No worries, this is what raspberry plants like to do! They send up runners here and there occasionally, I guess as a way of propagating their species. I get them, too, and I just pull them up out of the ground, roots and all. However, if you need more raspberry plants, you could gently dig them up and put them into your “official” raspberry bed!

Q: I have a question about blue berries. I live in Breckenridge, KY and have had blueberries for 3 years they just set there and don’t grow. What do I need to do to raise blueberries? My granddaughter loves them. DN, Breckenridge, KY.

A: We’ve grown blueberries successfully for about 25 years now and just love them. There are 3 things that come to mind as potential problems: 1. Are they getting enough sun? The plants need at least 6 hours of sun per day, but even more would be great.
2. Is the soil acidic? Blueberries require soil that has a low pH. You can address this by adding peat moss to the bed each year (be careful not to disturb the plants’ roots as they are very shallow) or by sprinkling sulphur on the bed. 3. Do you have multiple varieties planted together? Blueberries are self-fruitful, meaning they don’t necessarily need a pollinator, but you’ll get better productivity if you have different varieties. There are early, mid- and late-season varieties, so if you need to add any to your existing bed, be sure to choose another variety that produces during the same time of year for it to be an effective pollinator.

Note: For those who live in the Pacific Northwest, here is a link to Blueberry Cultivars for the Pacific Northwest, published by Oregon State University.