It's still berry picking season and the blueberries at my Bedford, New York farm are ripe for the picking!
Plump, juicy, and sweet, with vibrant colors from red to the deepest purple-black, blueberries are one of nature’s finest treasures. I love to use them for jams, jellies, and pies, but they’re also wonderful with cereal, in pancakes and cobblers, and of course, in handfuls on their own. Low in fat, yet packed with vitamin-C and antioxidants, it’s not surprising they’re one of America’s favorite fruits.
Enjoy these photos.
Blueberries are among the most popular berries for eating. Here in the United States, they are second only to strawberries.
My blueberries are all from these bushes located between my flower garden and large Equipment Barn, next to a stand of quince trees. The posts are the same 18th-century Chinese granite uprights I use for the clematis pergola, my apple espaliers, and my raspberry bushes.
Standard blueberry bushes grow about six to 10-feet tall. New shoots grow from the crown under the soil.
At the base, blueberry shrubs have multiple canes growing directly out of the soil in clumps. The canes or branches are smooth and thornless. These bushes have done so well here at the farm. I am always so pleased with how prolific they are every year.
There are two types of blueberries, highbush and lowbush. Highbush blueberries are the types you commonly find at grocery stores and farmers’ markets. Lowbush blueberries are smaller, sweeter blueberries often used for making juices, jams, and baked goods.
They are pale greenish at first, and then reddish-purple and finally dark purple-blue when ripe for picking.
Here, one can see the colors of the berries as they develop – green, then red, then blue.
When harvesting the fruits, select plump, full berries with a light gray-blue color. A berry with a hint of red is not fully ripened.
And blueberries don’t actually reach their full flavor until a few days after they turn blue, so a tip to know which ones are the best – tickle the bunches lightly, and only the truly ripe ones will fall into your hand.
Blueberry bushes have glossy leaves that are green or bluish-green from spring through summer. The leaves are ovate, in an irregular oval or slightly egg shape that is wider at the bottom than the top. Blueberry leaves can also be harvested and dried for teas.
These bushes are so full! I grow many blueberry varieties, including ‘Bluegold’, ‘Chandler’, ‘Darrow’, ‘Jersey’, and ‘Patriot’.
Many blueberries also fall to the ground. All those picked are carefully inspected – only the best are saved. And do you know who also loves blueberries? The wild turkeys here love to forage and eat the berries that fall.
Each of these fruits is about five to 16 millimeters large with a flared crown at the end.
They were once called “star fruits” by North American indigenous peoples because of the five-pointed star shaped crown.
Blueberries are also covered in a protective powdery epicuticular wax known as the “bloom”. These berries are just right for picking. Blueberries are high in fiber, high in vitamin-C, and contain one of the highest amounts of antioxidants among all fruits and vegetables.
We like to pick berries using these small boxes. After they are picked, store blueberries unwashed for a few days in the refrigerator for up to five days.
Enma and Elvira are careful to pick only the bluest of them all, leaving the light green ones and reddish ones to mature.
Elvira picked this box from just two bushes, but there are many more to go!
Blueberries produce from early summer through late fall – we will pick lots and lots of berries before the end of the season.
There is always so much work to do on my Bedford, New York farm.
During summer, all my large potted tropical plants are displayed outdoors in various locations around the farm. Smaller potted specimens are also put out in groups near my greenhouses where they can be closely maintained. One collection of alocasias and colocasias, some new and some which I've been growing for awhile, was ready to repot into larger containers. Repotting can be a tedious process, but a very important one that keeps all my plants healthy.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
Many alocasias are loved for their striking foliage. Varieties can be found with different leaf colors, sizes, and shapes. Alocasia plants are native to tropical regions of Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific, and can grow up to 10 feet tall in their natural environments. I have many alocasias and love to display them every summer.
Alocasia ‘Borneo Giant’ has bold green leaves on rigid stems. When mature, it can be seven to 10 feet tall with leaves up to five feet wide.
Alocasia ‘Sumo’ has large, dark green leaves and can grow up to 10 feet tall. It is a hybrid plant between Alocasia ‘Portora’ and ‘Purple Cloak.’ Look closely and notice the stems are dark reddish-black.
This is Alocasia Macrorrhiza Variegata. Variegated plants have leaves, stems, fruits, or other parts with more than one color. The colors can appear as stripes, blotches, borders, speckles, or dots, and can be white, light green, yellow, red, pink, brown, or violet. The patterns can be symmetrical and regular, or more sporadic and uneven. This alocasia variety is a little more rare than the others. I always look for rare and unusual plants.
Every leaf is different, showing off its interesting green and white markings. Another leaf on the same plant has one half completely white.
The undersides of alocasia leaves can be leathery and have striking veins and textures.
Alocasia and Colocasia are both elephant ear plants in the Araceae family. This is Colocasia ‘Black Ruffle.’ It has dark, heart-shaped leaves, which become ruffled at the edges as they grow.
My gardeners always save pots – they come in very handy when repotting growing plants and seedlings.
Whenever potting a large selection of plants, the team does so in a production line process, which is quick and efficient. They also work on tarps, so any spilled soil can be collected easily and used elsewhere.
There is at least one drainage hole at the bottom of each pot. Drainage holes allow excess water to drain and help protect the plant’s roots from bacteria, fungus, and rot, which can occur when roots sit in water for too long and can’t breathe.
Alocasias prefer soil that is both well-draining and loose. Choose a tropical mix with bark, sand, and loam. I like to use Miracle-Gro Potting Mix.
The pot is filled about a third of the way up. The root ball will sit on top of this layer and be surrounded with more soil. The right amount of soil will allow the base of the plant to sit right under the rim of the pot.
Matthew removes the plant from its old pot and gently cuts the root ball with his Hori Hori to stimulate growth.
The root ball is placed in the center of the pot at a similar depth to its previous pot and positioned so its roots grow down.
After backfilling, Matthew tamps down to ensure good contact with the soil.
I am a big believer in feeding all plants – if you eat, so should your plants.
These plants are given Osmocote Plus from Miracle-Gro, a controlled release fertilizer that’s ideal for container plants.
Each granule is covered with an organic resin that regulates the daily release of nutrients.
Josh pots up another alocasia. It doesn’t take long before all the plants are done.
These plants will be given a good drink of water and then placed where they can get bright, indirect sunlight. It is so nice to have all the tropical plants outside this time of year.
Here in the Northeast, temperatures today are expected to hit the mid 80s - a little break following this week's humid heat wave.
Despite some uncomfortable summer weather, the growing vegetables at my Bedford, New York farm are thriving. Yesterday, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and I picked green peppers, artichokes, beets, radishes, turnips, and others. The crew also did some more maintenance work - weeded, prepared beds for the next crops, secured stakes where necessary, and put down landscape cloth around the perimeter of the garden for my pumpkins. With a garden this large, it's important to visit every day and keep up with its care.
Here are the latest photos, enjoy.
My gardeners and I have been spending a lot of time in this large half-acre space. In order to have delicious, beautiful vegetables, it’s important to harvest and replant, check on what’s doing well and remove what is not. This garden has been so productive and all the vegetables look fantastic.
My tomatoes are growing beautifully, and every single one is off the ground. Keeping tomato plants off the ground is important to prevent fruit rot and the spread of disease. Tomatoes are naturally sprawling plants that put out roots along their stems when they touch the soil.
I use bamboo stakes to support the vining plants. The horizontal and vertical canes are very sturdy.
I also use bamboo for the peppers and eggplants – upright supports that are placed around all the growing plants.
Here, the hot peppers are doing well, and will soon be ready to pick. My crew loves hot peppers, and I grow many of them to share.
I used these wrought iron stakes for the eggplants, which can be heavy. The twine is pulled from the ends of the rows keeping the branches of the plants from breaking.
I prefer to pick eggplants early when they are young and tender. Picking early will encourage the plant to grow more, and will help to extend the growing season.
Our sweet bell pepper plants are also well-supported with bamboo.
I picked a whole bucket of green peppers and there are still more to harvest.
The tomatillo, also known as the Mexican husk tomato, is a plant of the nightshade family bearing small, spherical, and green fruit. This is my first year growing them in this garden and they’re doing splendidly.
I’m a firm believer of succession planting, the practice of following one crop with another to maximize a garden’s yield. It is a very efficient use of gardening space and time. As soon as one bed is picked, it is cleaned, raked, and fed in preparation for the next crop.
Close by, Ryan is already making rows for a new batch of beans, which will sprout within the next two weeks.
We already have another bed of basil growing.
This year, I decided I would plant all the pumpkins around the perimeter of the garden. What do you think? And, to keep the area neat and tidy, I put down this landscape weed cloth.
Here, one can already see how the vines are growing onto the cloth. It’s an experiment, but I think the pumpkins will do very well here.
These are the peas. I grow both shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and edible pods, which can be eaten whole. I planted many peas along my trellis in the center of my garden.
Ripe squash will be firm, fairly heavy for its size, and vibrantly colored. Some are already too big, but still delicious. And don’t get confused… all zucchini are squash, but not all squash are zucchini. The term “squash” refers to the plant species within the gourd family, which is divided into winter squash and summer squash.
Here, Ryan picks the beets. Beets are sweet and tender – and one of the healthiest foods. Beets contain a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support.
Although typically a reddish-purple hue, beets also come in varieties that are golden orange-yellow and white.
These are the turnips from the garden. Turnips are smooth flat-round and white vegetables that mature early and are best harvested young – when they are up to two inches in diameter. The flavor is sweet and fruity, and the texture is crisp and tender.
The sunflowers are still looking great in the center of the garden. Sunflowers come in an amazing variety of sizes and colors. Some grow as tall as 15 feet, with flower heads larger than a foot in diameter, while others only grow to five feet with heads only six to 10 inches across. Enjoy your gardening weekend!
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