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harvestmann

late blueberries lacking quality

alan haigh
11 years ago

Strange season, this one. Blueberries started out very good but they've really flattened out and are bland and making me blue. Frost eliminated most of my summer tree fruit so I am disappointed to be once again disappointed.

Elliot is ripening about a month early but the fruit is barely worth picking and some unseen insect (I'm thinking wasp) is slashing fruit and making them soft and mushy. No worms inside damaged fruit though (thus, the wasp theory). Berkley is usually very high quality, but not this year.

I don't know if it's the high heat but we aren't breaking records here the way it is in much of the middle of the country. I've had better berries in just as hot of weather but maybe it's the combination or crazy early spring with the heat that is the problem. Rabbiteyes would probably do better on a season like this then the later highbush varieties.

Comments (2)

  • denninmi
    11 years ago

    Well, it's been hot enough here! Detroit has had 5 days above 100, when our normal is one day ever 2 1/2 years.

    I did NOT water blueberries. Going into June, they had sufficient water and good soil moisture reserve. And, of course, I fell for the same weatherman's siren song as always "tomorrow it's going to rain", when in fact it never does rain. So now they're small.

    And, with hot weather, they are also very sweet but pretty bland. Not any worse than overwatered and overfertilized commercial production berries. At least they're something. Something is better than nothing.

  • Scott F Smith
    11 years ago

    Same here, bland and sweet on the later ones. Early ones were good.

    Scott