r/Berries

First, the success..

I decided to turn my raised bed Veggie Garden into a perennial Berry Garden.  It was a bit of a mix before as I did plant some Honeyberry  plants and some Hardy Kiwi's.  I loved seeing those plants come to life in the spring.  That is what encouraged me to do more.. and more I did!

Last year, I added a few varieties of black berries and raspberries.  They are all planted in a row with trellis.  I keep telling myself I will be able to keep them in check by training them on that trellis, so far, so good.  I also got a Justaberry, a Red Current, a few everbearing strawberries, an "Evergreen Huckleberry" and a Lingonberry only because they were on sale, but I'm glad I got it.  The Lingonberry already gave us a few fruits last year and they are tart delicious. Last, but not least, I got an Issai Cold Hardy Kiwi that is self fertile. 

Everybody went into the ground early last year and everybody made it through summer happy, with some giving us fruit that we did not expect till this year. 

With that success, I stepped it up a notch this year!

Another cold hardy Kiwi female (Ken's red)

6 Different Blueberries (Toro, Chandler, BlueRay, Pink-Lemonaid, Duke, Patriot)

A white Current, Red Jostaberry and a Logan-Berry.

I also ordered 4 diffrent verietes of Lingonberry to act as ground cover in the boxes.  Those have not come in yet.

I prepped all the beds by weeded and loosing up the soil, adding some fresh compost (slightly acidic pine compost from local nursery)

Sprinkled some fertilizer for acid loving plants, and put all my berries into the ground and followed up with a couple of inches of fine pine mulch.  I was so proud of myself.👍

I had tested my soil before and it tested as being acidic so I thought I had the green light for blueberries.  Well my soil is 6.0, which is acidic enough for the Lingonberry, kiwi's, Huckleberries, Honeyberries and rest of the berries.. 

HOWEVER I just found out blueberries like it around 5.0 or less..  The failure🤦‍♂️

They all went into the ground last week.  I will be digging out the blue berries and surrounding soil starting today and for the next few days after work😔

The game plan it to collect all the pine mulch and set it aside, mix peat-moss and sulfur into the soil before putting the blueberries back in and covering with pine mulch.

I was told that the peat moss will give it a drop in acidity right away and the sulfur will gradually break down making the beds acidic for the long haul while the slowly composting pine mulch will help keep it that way.

Any tips, tricks, or advice before getting started in re-prepping my beds is appreciated.👍

Found these in the forest in my frontyard and they seem kinda tasty, but I don't want to get sick or die, so i'm asking r/berries. They grow similar to grapes, the plant they grow on has spikey leaves, and they have a purple powder coating them, but are green when it's rubbed off.

The first picture at the back of my garage is southwest facing so I don’t suspect I would have any issues there. The second is more northwest. I’m not a big flower guy so I would like to put something here that will produce some kind of fruit. I love berries so I figured raspberries would be a good start. I would love recommendations on anything else potentially worth planing. I’m in northeast PA if that is a major factor. Thanks for the help!

Hi r/berries, I've been lurking for a bit and was hoping my first post would be more triumphant, but I'm a first time grower and having trouble I can't diagnose. I'm hoping someone here can spot what I'm doing wrong. I bought a 25 pack of Albion Strawberry Bare Roots from Burpee, and after one month about half of them appear to be dead or dying.

Conditions:

• Climate: Albuquerque, NM. Zone 7b, and with the quirk that our summers can be brutally hot & dry, and the sunlight is quite intense due to the high altitude. Multiple local nurseries have told me that "full sun" can mean as little as five hours here.
• "Garden" (pics 01-03): Two raised beds 6-8ft long, oriented north-south, next to a cinderblock wall that shades them until about 11am (as of mid-April). (While strawberries are full sun plants, I judged this acceptable due to the previously mentioned guidance about sun hours here).
• Growing medium: 1 part vermiculite, 1 part perlite, 1 part peat moss, 1 part compost (mushroom & steer manure). Basically mel's mix with a higher ratio of organics.
• Amendments: Azomite and Espoma Berry-Tone, applied according to package labels
• Planting: March 18 from bare roots (4.5 weeks ago as of these pictures). Soaked in lukewarm water for ~45min before transplanting, and I tried hard to follow the common advice "make sure not to bury the root crown".
• Mulch: Partly pine straw from my trees, partly a coco choir mulch product from Costco
• Water: I've been checking the soil moisture levels and top watering 1/3 inch every 3-4 days. One thing that has surprised me is that this potting mixture is staying more moist for longer than I expect.

Problems

• Dead plants (pics 4-5): About half the plants appear to be dead. About a quarter of the total never "woke up" at all after transplanting, and another quarter put out leaves but have since shriveled up.
• Dying plant (pic 6-8): I caught this individual today, which appears to be going the way of the others. Including these pictures in case it helps diagnosis.
• Damaged (eaten?) leaves (pic 9): This doesn't seem to be related, but a couple plants have damage to leaves that look like something's eaten them. I haven't seen caterpillars or similar, and other than the pine straw all the materials in these raised beds came from big box stores or nurseries just before planting.

I'm pretty confused and a bit disheartened, since I put in a lot of research and labor (and cost) to control as many variables as I possibly could. I'd really appreciate any insight more experienced gardeners might have on my situation.

For what it's worth, the tomatoes, last year's dwarf blackberry, and 5 bare root blackberries I have in fabric grow bags all seem to be doing fine (pic 10), even though I need to finish mulching.

Bought one small Fall Gold raspberry last spring and stuck it in a pot. Didn’t get huge but I was eating raspberries up until like thanksgiving. Kept two floracanes when repotting this spring, it to see what happens…and we’ve got edible raspberries in April!

Found on my blackberries and grapes

I’m fairly sure I planted too many so they would stunt each others growth. There’s red raspberries and blackberries(thornless). Did I make a mistake? Goal is for them to climb the lattice across the side of the deck.

Does anyone know what's wrong with my strawberry plant or what i can do? I've had this issue for the past few weeks and I've only harvested 1 good berry so far, the rest are fried. For some side info my plant gets about 7-10 hours of sunlight daily and I water it from the soil every other day.

As soon as I got them, I made sure to plant them immediately. Use basic potting/raised garden bed soil.

Also, curious if anyone else has bought this before and their success rate. The reviews on Burpee‘s website are not great. But I want to risk it and try it anyways.

I hear raspberries can grow pretty aggressively but I’m assuming they couldn’t cross this? It’s about 3 feet wide and over 2 feet from the bottom to the top.

What is happening? This happened last year too! I’m not seeing evidence of pests, but I’m not sure I would…help me. They’re Fall Gold raspberries and I’ve only gotten two little berries ever.

This looks like some sort of fungal infection to me. Anybody know for sure? My plan is to cut off infected leaves- should i prune entire branches? And what about treatment?

Other than that I’m just keeping it in a sunny spot in our foyer until I can plant it and trying not to over water.