3,000th Page Hit!!!

Today around 11am, we received our 3,000th page hit!  That is 1,000 page hits since mid-March.  We will be updating the blog soon with information on our final blackberry count, a summer synopsis and plans for next year.  We're also in the process of updating the website with new information and the results of this summer's trials. We'll leave you with two pictures of "best friends."  No, the second picture was not staged.

Blackberries continue to ripen . . . inside!

  Just tasted our first Silvan blackberry this morning.  Another WOW!  Tasted strongly like boysenberry, but quite sweet, like the pancake syrup. Definitely worth keeping.  Unfortunately, this year it flowered July 15 (3 weeks after Wild Treasure, Siskiyou and Tayberry).  However, it appears to be somewhat frost tolerant and ripens well inside once the berries have turned red.

Both Silvan and Tayberry survived our first (and very early) frost of 29F on August 30th.  August 31st brought a low of 28F.  We saw the first snowflakes on September 3rd, but no snow accumulated.  Our wet weather (around 14 inches from June 22 through September 23) left for a few weeks early in September, but has returned. The first measurable snowfall came (0.5 inches) on September 23rd. Four more inches fell on September 30th and it is snowing today, with another 4 inches expected.  We had hoped to put row cover over the most promising blackberries and Tayberries before the first snowfall, but didn't get all of them.  We will try to cover the remainder this weekend.

  We had planned to dig trenches and put all pots in the trenches over the winter.  However, the early snow has hampered efforts to get a backhoe up here, so we will be putting plants under the house again this winter.  Not ideal, but the best we can do.  The grapes and potted blackberries will be covered with plastic and straw under the hoop house frame (which discourages mama moose from trampling them) as we have done in the last few winters.  It seems to work okay.

  Speaking of grapes, our brief (104 frost free days) and cool summer didn't help much in grape production.  We were, however, surprised to find a small cluster of Seneca grapes pretty close to edible on September 23rd.  Rather than being hard as a rock, they were sort of crunchy-soft and had a fairly typical grape flavor.  They were a bit tart (acid hadn't dropped yet) and not very sweet (low sugar).  This was quite a change from last year, which was longer and warmer.  Perhaps they are adjusting - and we modified our cultural practices to include both cluster thinning and berry thinning, so there was much less to ripen.  Nothing else was close to ripe when the temperature dropped to 23F on Sept. 24th.

  Looking ahead to next summer, we have one Wild Treasure blackberry vine with one 10ft long cane and several 5-6 ft long canes.  Since the first flowers on each lateral to bloom are likely to ripen even in a cool year, we should have significantly more berries next year (this year we got 15 berries off of a total of 3 ft of cane).  I hope the Agribon-50 floating row cover that we put over Wild Treasure mid-September will help protect the canes through the winter and early spring.  We have already seen some dieback from the frosts on the Wild Treasure laterals, but with the snow cover, they should be better insulated.

  We are also looking forward to more Tayberries next year.  This year, they were hit hard by Lygus bugs that stunted their growth.  Keeping those bugs under control will be the plan next spring.  Our two Tayberry plants have long (4-7 ft) canes on them right now and with protection, hopefully most of these canes will survive the winter.

  We started to make an introductory video about the farm last month.  When the schedule gets a little less hectic, we hope to put it up on YouTube.  We will post here and on our website when that happens.

  In the meantime, we continue to watch the snow fall outside and our blackberries ripen inside.  What a treat!

Wild Treasure . . . Doesn't Disappoint!

We got to taste our first ripe Wild Treasure yesterday . . . and followed up with a second today.  All that can be said is WOW!  So different from blackberries you buy in the store.  There is an explosion of different fruit flavors initially, including plum, raspberry, cherry, and blackberry, followed by a long strawberry finish.  Looks like about a dozen will ripen off of about 2 ft of cane.  There are many other berries - and flower buds, but they will be damaged by frost before they ripen.  Next year we will look into getting WT to flower earlier, so it begins ripening earlier and can yield a larger crop.  We played with putting black weed block under one side of a plant and found that primocane growth is increased substantially over this material.  We may have a cane that approaches 10 ft long this year.  Keeping the voles (and mama moose) away from it will be the goal - along with protecting it from the cold.
  Tonight was our first night of the season selling produce at Murphy Dome Rd. and Jennifer Dr.  Had some beautiful heads of lettuce, a little spinach, and a few zucchini.  We may have a few Wild Treasure blackberries to sample at a future date - if you can beat me to them!

Produce Sales to Start This Weekend!

We will be out at Jennifer Dr. and Murphy Dome Rd. Saturday evening 4ish to 7ish.  We will have leaf lettuce, spinach and zucchini.  I guess we know what grows even in the cooler years on the farm.  We should also have some raspberries, but not sure what color or kind yet.  Prices will be lettuce=$3 each, spinach=$6/lb, zucchini=$0.50 each, and raspberries=$10/lb.
  Blackberries are still struggling with the cool temperatures - and the moose! Mama moose found the blackberry patch last weekend and she has stripped much of the leaves and tips off the primocanes of several varieties (including our super vigorous Siskiyous).  If we can get a fence up around them, most will recover and just be very bushy next year.  Without long primocanes on the Siskiyous, it will be difficult to train them next year and separate the fruiting canes from next year's primocanes, but we may get a larger crop off of them.  We are attempting to protect Wild Treasure and Black Diamond by laying floating row cover over them - and crossing our fingers.

Fruit Season has Arrived!

  Tasted the first Prelude red raspberry today.  Quite tasty, indeed.  Prelude is a very early season raspberry in the Lower 48 and it appears to be early here, as well.  Boyne and Cascade Delight are probably a week or two away from ripening.  They and the other berries are about two weeks behind this year due to our cool and rainy (another inch Friday and Saturday) summer.  As of the end of July, we had only accumulated 450 growing degree days (base 50 F).  This is about 100 less than we usually have by the end of July and about 250 behind last year.  Unfortunately, our frequent heavy rains and cool temperatures have also upset pollination.  Several early flowering berry varieties have very poor fruit set this summer.  Cascade Delight has some developing berries, but many of the flowers didn't pollinate.  Boyne suffered similarly.  Other varieties that flowered a week or two later (Willamette, Meeker, Cumberland black raspberry) have very good fruit set.
  Similar problems with fruit set seem to have affected the blackberries, but we are not sure if that was partly due to the application of diatomaceous earth we used to get rid of Lygus bugs that were eating the blackberry flowers.  Bees avoid diatomaceous earth.  Anyway, we found a Wild Treasure blackberry starting to turn red today.  By next weekend it should be turning black! And several berries on a Siskiyou blackberry have swelled to full size.  I think we'll start seeing lots of red and black (and yellow) in the coming days!!!  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Who knows, maybe next year we can enter some blackberries in the Tanana Valley Fair.  That would be awesome!
  Other fruits that are just now ripening include honeyberries and strawberries.  Tasted the first Blue Belle honeyberry on Saturday.  Very soft, but oh so tasty! The Hood strawberries are also tasty.  Unfortunately, we don't have enough of either of these to share this year.  And if Chica keeps raiding the raspberries, they may be a little hard to come by, as well.  I caught her eyeing the Preludes yesterday.  She has acquired a taste for them.  I've considered planting a patch for her.
  We have some spinach and leaf lettuce that we will start selling at the gravel pit at Jennifer Dr. and Murphy Dome Rd.  The time has not been set yet however, because my day job work schedule is not as flexible as it was last summer.  We will probably try to be there on Saturday evenings.  Not ideal by any means, but it will have to do.  We will post again before our first day.
  I'll leave you with a picture of our Anthony Waterer Spirea that is now in bloom. Gorgeous color!

More wind and rain

Winds gusting over 30 mph blew through the farm today, collapsing most of our grape house and damaging some of our blackberries.  The collapsed hoop house over the grapes (we were hoping that there wouldn't be a repeat of May 31st) broke canes off of several vines, but others were spared.  Now we have to get the plastic (which has many holes in it now) back over them before the leaves sunburn.  Cloudy skies are forecast - and more rain - for the next few days, so we have a little time to repair the hoop house.  Unfortunately, the collapse also broke off one of our two tomato plants, so we will definitely be short on tomatoes this year.  The winds blew over several potted bushes and trees, swept a tray of artichoke seedlings off the tractor hood, and appear to have damaged primocanes and flowering laterals on several blackberries.  Wild Treasure looks to have weathered the storm well, however, with no apparent damage.  Gotta love that variety!  Once the wind dies down (it's still going pretty good even at this hour) and the sun comes out, we will see how much damage was done to the blackberry patch.  As for the raspberries, thank goodness I trellised the Cumberland black raspberries.  They and the rest of the raspberries look fine.
  Things like the weather, which one cannot control, require perseverance and deep respect for nature.  Times like these remind me that in Alaska just about anything is possible at any time of the year and both people and plants need to be robust to survive - and not just the cold!

Fragrant flowers to come next week and then produce!

The first flowers have appeared on lavender and Mock Orange should flower soon!  These two will add some fragrance to the plethora of flowers that are now blooming around the farm.  Other plants in bloom include strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, cherries (almost done), potentillas, lilacs (Ms. Canada - Ms. Kim is a few weeks away), bleeding heart, pansies and ground covers.  Anthony Waterer spirea looks to be a ways away.  Peonies will start any day now, though there will only be a few.
  We did some maintenance on the bulldozer today in preparation for moving trees into a pile.  With trees out of the way, land clearing should go a little faster.  Of course, that assumes that we don't get 3.84 inches of rain in 40 hours again!  The good news is the warm weather now is drying everything out.  If the weather holds we will be clearing some more land soon.  Maybe (and that is a big maybe) by this time next year we will be open for tours.
  Produce sales will likely start in two weeks, with spinach, lettuce, tomatoes and whatever fruit is ripe.  There will be raspberries most of August and September.  Blackberries should be ready beginning late August.  We will post the hours of our produce sales when the time comes.