AdAgrA 2021: Hidden Treasure

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Small Fruits

Anna Perea

Barry, Berry, Bury! Blackberries & Raspberries

All the presenters donating their time and their experience and their words of encouragement to us is a really great thing.

And so I just want to take a moment to remind you about the use of your masks here in the building.

Also to hold your comments and questions to the end.

The greatest thing is, this is not the last class of the event, so I'm sure you'll be able to connect with our presenter after the class, if there's not enough time at the end.

But just hold them to the end, most presenters have a question session.

That way they can get through everything they need to.

There's feedback that they're, this is the first year that I've noticed they're asking for feedback.

And that feedback is gonna be very helpful.

So if you take the time to give feedback for the class, that would be good.

And so now let me take the time to introduce to you our presenter today.

Her name is Anna Perea, and she has combined her passion for youth and her gifts as a teacher, nurse, artist, and farmer.

And the result is the new Adagra Agriculture Curriculum, which she's gonna be unveiling here at this conference this year.

And she lives with her family on Big Tooth Farm in Texas, and she is excited to see how God will continue to use their family.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to our presenter.

Well, it's a privilege to be here with you all.

So we've got a pretty good divided group, a good combination.

So I just want to pray that what I share with you is a blessing and that we, I mean, following Mr.

Norris and his presentation on propagation, I don't know if you were here for that, but that was amazing and it just leaves me in awe about how wonderful God is.

He can provide food and abundance of everything we need with just the smallest, simplest little cuttings of a plant.

I'm just blown away and I just want to praise God for His amazing ability in nature and for providing for us.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, you deserve all the glory.

May you help guide my words so that everything that I'm able to share is relevant and important and gives you the glory.

So as you notice in the title it says Barry, Barry, Barry, At least if you're from the United States, that's how you say it, right?

So I'm a nurse, and I was taking care of a patient, an English patient.

And he goes to me, he says, can you explain something to me?

He says, the American English makes no sense.

He's like, how can every vowel have the same sound?

He's like, we say barry, like the man's name, and we say berry for the fruit, and we say burry if you're going to be buried when you die.

And I'm like, oh okay, and he's like, but you say berry berry berry for everything, it's so confusing.

I'm like, well, you haven't been to Texas.

I was like because not only do we mispronounce every word we put the vowels where we want them.

Bogota is spelled B-A-G-O-T-A so it's not or it's B-O-A-T-A I don't even know but anyway it's totally mispronounced.

It's supposed to be Bogota, but we say B-O-G-O-T-A.

But there's some other really mispronounced vowels, like, do we say bob wire?

I mean it's supposed to be barbed wire but I say bob wire.

That was a new, that's an East Texas thing.

That's a really pretty dress you've got on.

And this was the 1, I've never used it, but bald.

So for all of you that may have not heard any anything wrong with those mispronunciations you're probably from Texas and that's just how you normally speak and that's that's wonderful Because that's when I hear people talking like that.

I know that that's hospitality that southern Greatness and and so from all of you from Texas welcome and for those that wish they were from Texas, welcome as well.

And we're going to go on this amazing adventure through berry, berry, berries.

As a teacher, you know, they always want you to get your objectives out so that kind of your brain can follow some kind of order.

So we're going to be talking about raspberry versus blackberries, the life cycle and when to prune, growing and propagating.

Someone had asked in the last class if you can propagate those cuttings from blackberries, and it's actually very doable, and we'll go over that.

Different varieties, pests, and diseases, and then creative ways to use your berries.

What's the difference between blackberries and raspberries?

Do you know which 1 of those is blackberry?

Raspberry, okay, that's a black raspberry, and that one's a blackberry.

Yeah, what's amazing is that there's so many similarities between raspberries and blackberries, especially the black raspberries and the blackberries.

They're almost identical, except maybe for flavor and a few other things, and the places they grow.

There's a lot of differences, and there's a lot of similarities.

So some of the similarities between blackberries and raspberries, by the way, can everyone see, if you can't, you might just come over here, or tell me to move, am I in your way?

Weston Adams

Meet the Muscadine

Okay, I am excited to talk about grapes, but these are not just regular grapes, and I'll talk about that here in a little bit.

For the sake of AudioVerse, If anyone would like to have the PowerPoints that I am showing with this in the class, they should be available.

If you scroll down, you should be able to find the PowerPoints or the PDF version in AudioVerse.

So If you're listening on AudioVerse, go ahead and download those.

This would seem like a strange place to start a seminar about grape growing, but this is the reality in much of the southeast.

I've seen a lot of grapes in Tennessee and throughout the southeast I understand that it's a there's a similar story.

We have so much humidity and heat that a lot of grapes, Concord, definitely the the table grapes you'd buy in the store, They simply won't grow or if they do grow, they will frequently get a disease called black rot.

And this is a picture of that disease from what it looks like.

And this is what it will do to those grapes in a lot of the southeast.

There are exceptions sometimes, but as far as regular grapes grow, just the ones we would expect to plant, when you're in the southeast, they have a lot of struggles.

Now, in California and in other dry climates, regular grapes are a different story.

So what I'm talking about is it's especially applicable to the southeast because of the conditions we have.

And that's why that's why I recommend muscadines.

And even in the humid climate that we have there, these grapes are doing very well.

This is a green bronze variant of the muscadine.

Okay, what I would like to talk about is specifically what is a muscadine.

Because to most people they would just say, you know, these are grapes.

And I want to look at some of the similarities.

They look similar to grapes as far as the berries.

Muscadine vine structure is very much like a grape.

So if you didn't know anything else, you would expect that you see these vines they're just regular grape vines or I would say you would think they're just regular grape vines and to an extent they are.

Fruit appearance and use They're very similar to a concord.

And in trellising method, to a large extent you can train a muscadine vine just like you would any other grape.

Here's some more pictures from our friend's vineyard.

But I would also like to talk about some of the differences.

Some of the things that make muscadines different from a typical grape.

Muscadines are extremely productive, but they don't bear their fruit in clusters like a traditional grape.

What you see in this in this picture is more typical.

The grapes will be scattered along the vine instead of burying them in clusters.

Muscadine vines can produce 50 pounds or more of fruit per vine.

So they produce a lot, especially if they're taken care of very well.

In fact, they have potential to over-crop in some cases.

So it doesn't mean they produce less, but the way the fruit is distributed is different.

And actually, the muscadine grape genetically is different.

So on a genetic level, they are separate from other grapes.

They're in the same genus, I believe it's subgenus.

And they are native, native to the United States.

This map, you can see in the top there the URL where I pulled that from, this map shows where, I believe this is where muscadines are distributed natively.

So all those counties you see that have the light green are the counties where they have wild muscadines growing.

The states that you see in green are the states that have them.

But probably what you'd wanna pay more attention to is the counties because like obviously Texas has a lot of different climates, but this general area, if you are in this area, you're going to be wanting to look at muscadines if you have any interest in growing grapes.

Because this area is the area where regular grapes will really struggle, because it's a humid area, hot area, And it also is the area where we're really blessed with muscadines.

This area is where the muscadine grows natively.

So this is the area where it grows natively.

If you're in this area, I would consider growing muscadines.

Now if you're north of this area, you may still be thinking, can I grow muscadines?

Much north of this area, it's going to be a bit of a struggle.

If it gets below 0 degrees, if it dips much below 0 degrees, they will die.

They're a little bit tender when it comes to cold weather.

So this map gives you kind of an idea of whether or not you can be growing them successfully.

These are actually muscadines in their wild state.

So this is what you can find in the wild.

Actually, these wild varieties, they don't taste nearly as good as they look.

Because the skin on them is almost like leather, almost like genuine leather, really, really thick.

The cultivated ones have thick skin too, but often it's still fairly edible.

The wild ones have extremely thick skin, even if they look pretty.

So you really, if you're going to be growing them, you probably don't want to do the wild ones.

It would probably be better to get some cultivated ones.

And thankfully they've developed beautiful lines of cultivated muscadines.

That's where I've purchased most of my vines and most of the ones I'm selling here and I've sold at different conferences.

And these are some of the different ones they've developed, primarily from the wild ones.

They have a wide range of colors, primarily the the green bronze ones and the dark colored ones, and the size is greatly improved.

Many of the muscadines have very, very large fruit and they're fun to pick because you can fill a bucket really fast.

Okay, now I also want to talk, oh I should mention as they've improved this, the fruit quality of these muscadines, to a large extent they've retained the disease resistance.

So even these cultivated ones still have a lot of the disease resistance that you find in the wild ones.

Now I'm not gonna go into too much detail on this, but if you are interested in health, there is there's a lot you might want to look into as far as muscadines.

There's been research done on their health benefits.

Isaac Chuljian

Small Scale Commercial Blueberry

Maybe we can have a quick word of prayer first.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.

And for the Ad Agra conference we are able to attend, Please send the Holy Spirit on the whole conference and may this be a blessing and give the information needed to all who come here.

Okay, so we've been, my parents started a blueberry nursery, I guess when I was a baby, so it was about 20, a little over 20 years ago.

And we've been growing blueberries ever since.

This is when we were a little younger a few years ago with my brother and sisters.

So we're going to in this class we only have an hour so We're going to have to go over things pretty quickly, but we'll do an overview of blueberries, talk about the species, site selection, planting, fertilization.

I'm sorry, it looks like there's a typo here.

I'm not very good with this stuff but then we're going to do irrigation if you any of you brought printed out the handout I think I changed order of a couple things a little but then there's we're going to do pruning pest and disease harvest and frost protection.

So blueberries, they're a vaccinating species in the Arracacia family.

So the most, the 3 most common species are Rabbiteye.

They're native to the deep south and they require, they grow in like zones 3 to, I mean sorry, 7 to 8.

You might be able to 6B, they'll probably still do alright some in.

And they require around 4-800 chilling hours.

Then the highbush or northern highbush, They're what's grown like up in Michigan and they grow from zones 3 to 7 and they require more chilling hours.

They take like 800 to 1200 plus chilling hours.

Now the rabbit eyes are the easiest bush there are to grow so if you can grow rabbit eyes those are the ones you want to grow.

And then the Southern Highbush, they grow zone 7 to 10 and they require 150 to 900 chilling hours.

There are, I think there are a few blueberries that will grow without any chilling hours.

I don't know much about that though so this was the Gerard Kure he was a retired professor from University of Georgia he said the southern highbush is a plant looking for a place to die so if the rabbit eyes he was telling this to rabbit eye growers the rabbit eyes are much easier to grow So then a couple of some things you might want to consider about I have a list here of things you might want to consider about variety selection And it depends if you're if you're just growing them for your backyard some of these things might not Be as critical if you're selling them They need to be attractive looking So there's you want to make sure the stems detach and there's not too much cracking.

A dry skin with stem scars is very important to prevent post harvester rot.

A firm berry is important for good storage also.

You want of course you want good flavor, disease resistance, which we've never had any trouble with much disease other than mummyberry and some I'll talk about that a little later some of them some but some varieties had get it worse than others so that's important to consider And then for marketability, it's important to have a powdery, light-looking berry.

If it's a dark berry, people don't, it's not what people want.

So you want a size, and then you want bushes that are survive easy enough and ripens the right time.

You need cross pollination for the between the different varieties for the plants for the blueberries to get good production.

So here's just a few few standard rabbit rabbit eye varieties.

We've grown I have some experience with the The premier climax bright wall tiff blue the powder blue I just planted some but I I don't have much experience then there's some newer varieties then here's a few high bush which we haven't grown so I can't get tell you much about them and the Southern highbush.

I think so I think they will yeah I don't know I'm yeah I'm sorry we I Don't know if you got email, but at a girl sent out Email with a link to get the handouts to print them out beforehand.

I don't know if anyone did that but I think you can probably go on afterward.

So, there's different plants you can get.

The most common you'll be getting is 1 like this, a container grown, it's called a two-year plant.

It's not quite 2 years old but that's what it is.

So you'll get them, you want to plant them into wintertime.

Typically it's done in February so you get a plant it'll be just about like this.

You can also get bare root plants which are not they're not they're alright but they're not done as commonly.

You want to make sure they're virus free though, so you want to get them from a reputable source.

I'm afraid this isn't showing up quite like I I'm afraid I'm not very good with computer sorry but it's not showing there's different ones like blueberry ring spot and different which know this plant we haven't had any trouble with viruses the So I'm not that I don't have much experience with viruses but if you get it from a state inspected nursery like the state comes out every year and inspects our nursery and it should you should be getting a good plant from them.

They look for bad diseases and viruses that could be a problem.

You want it sunny, Well-drained soil is very important.

If you don't have well-drained soil, like heavy clay soil, you'll need to amend with pine bark and make build raised beds to like you might want them 18 inches 2 feet wide depending on how maybe 4 to 6 inches high depending on what your drainage is like.

High organic matter is very important for blueberries and you need the soil needs to be suitable and it's important to have a supply of water for irrigation.

Yeah, well this is a patch we just put in earlier this winter.

The soil here is very, very well drained.

It's really a very good spot for blueberries.

So we didn't do any raised beds we put a little pine bark in the holes but we didn't it already had like a 5% organic matter.

So you want to test and amend the soil, take care of any weed issues, make raised beds if you don't have very good drainage, and add organic matter, especially if it's, if you definitely need to add if it's below 3%.

So then, now blueberries are typically grown at a low pH in an acid soil.

That's, they're typically grown pH of 4.5 to 5.3, But the main issue with if you have a higher pH is iron chlorosis, iron deficiency.

Because you can see on this chart here that iron is more available at a low pH.

Also I haven't done a whole lot of research on this so I can't I can I know growing a metal low pH works and but I don't know that that's ideal?

We actually we limed our blueberry patch and amended it so for a more neutral pH.

But blueberries, they don't have a very good root system.

They rely a lot on the associations with the fungi and to help take up the minerals.

And what my understanding is that typically at a lower pH the fungi grow more.

I don't know that I don't know all the reasons why but you have more bacteria at a higher pH but the fungi is important for taking up the minerals but I know of people that grow them at a high pH and they do all right and we limed our blueberry patch this last spring so far it's Still looking great.

When you plant, when you plant your bush, you'll have it in a pot like this.

You want to take, let me try not to make a mess here, and you want to pull the roots apart.

This 1 here it's a fairly young bush, the roots are still fairly loose, but you don't want it to crown, so you want to kind of just pull the roots apart like that.

Try not I try not to make too much of a mess here.

So you want to have your soil well worked up before you plant them.

You don't want, if you have like perennial weeds or something, some major weeds, you want to make sure they're, you don't want like Johnson grass growing up in your patch afterward it can could be very challenging to get rid of after you establish the plants it's already challenging enough to get rid of before.

Then after you plant them you have weed control to deal with.

You can grow them in plastic mulch and you can mulch with like sawdust.

Something I forgot to mention earlier, when you plant your bushes you can use pine bark to incorporate in the soil.

You never want to incorporate fresh sawdust in the soil that will tie up your nitrogen.

You can incorporate pine bark is great it's what's most commonly used.

Peat moss is always great, it's also great but it's fairly expensive.

I don't think you would want to incorporate those in the soil.

They're great for mulching with on top afterward.

I wouldn't put those, mix them with the soil.

You can incorporate sawdust if it's very thoroughly rotted.

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Series

Small Fruits

Small Scale Commercial Blueberry

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Session 4

Blueberries

1h

Special Interests

Berry Basics for Beginners

1h 24m

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

03 Growing Blueberries

58m

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

05 Growing Blackberries and Raspberries

1h 6m

Small Fruits

Barry, Berry, Bury! Blackberries & Raspberries

59m

Intensive: Organic Blueberry Production

Organic Blueberry Production - Part 3

33m

Breakout Session 1

Intro to Small Fruit

58m

Sound Doctrine