Growing Fruit in Zone 3

This year we added some new fruits to our garden. I planted red and black currents from bare root plants. I don’t think I’ll see fruit on those for a couple of years. In the future I might spend a bit more for fully mature plants, as you will see fruit in less time. Currants are considered the easiest fruit for a novice to grow. I like that, something I can stick in the ground without a lot of fuss. Currents are highly nutritious and will make nice juice for jelly. We also added blueberries. We amended the soil with peat moss for acidity, and some sand for drainage. We mulched with pine bark, also very acidic. Blueberries need some fussing. You have to have good acidic soil with good drainage. We did get a few berries, nothing to crow about yet, but hopefully in a year or two we will be able to add preserved blueberries to our pantry.

We expanded our strawberry patch to include June bearing strawberries. These require that you train the plants into alternating rows. Each year you discard the plants that bore fruit and keep the new plants that you trained to grow off to one side. I don’t think we have our bed configured properly for this purpose. We are going to have to move the new plants to another bed in the spring. I notice a distinct difference between June bearing and Everbearing Strawberries. The June bearing strawberries have a lot more flavor, but they are small and very delicate. Also, as their name indicates, they bear fruit in only in early summer. The Everbearing variety produce very large strawberries, much like the “store bought” type. They are not as sweet, but the make dynamite jam and preserves, and they produce a LOT of fruit. We picked at least a pint a day for much of the summer, and in mid-summer I picked two pints on most days, I was still picking strawberries into October. I have 50 Everbearing plants, and from those we canned 50 jars of strawberry jam and preserves, froze 9 quarts of whole berries and ate strawberries almost daily. I do fuss over my strawberries. I make sure that the bed is weed free and mulched. We top dressed the plants with fertilizer in the spring and sprinkled a handful of manure around each plant in July. The plants really responded to the manure. I also make sure that I clip all of the new baby “sucker” plants as they emerge. You must clip all of the suckers in order to let the plant put energy into making fruit. Everbearing strawberry plants last about 3-4 years before they begin to slow down in yield. You then replace them with new plants. I’m also a big advocate of regular watering. I take note of when it rains and when it’s dry. I make sure that my garden gets an inch of water each week, and it is best if it’s from rain.

My husband is very handy, and built a frame for berry netting. It’s simply cheap pvc pipe configured like a cube over the garden. We hung netting on top and around the sides, leaving a space for us to enter. The birds, deer, chipmunks, and squirrels have been kept out so far! Deer will eat the plants right down to the dirt. They took quite a few of my Junebearing plants because we didn’t have them covered.

All the work is really worth it, we opened a jar of strawberry marmalade this morning...heaven on a waffle!