Boysenberries and blackberries

I have been picking the berries since May 22 this year. I think I have one week more to go for a total of a three week window. I generally harvest the berries at least every other day. This year I have placed a netting around the boysenberries for the first time because the birds like them too. It seems the birds have figured out a way to get the topmost berries despite the netting.

I think this is a bigger crop of berries than in prior years. One likely factor was our very heavy winter rains of 2016-2017 because I do not generally water the berries. The plant seem to be fairly drought tolerant.

It is a real treat to have boysenberries. Mine are fragile and fall apart easily. I really have no idea how they would handle being picked, packaged, and then sold, even at a farmer's market.

The next task will be to target the vines which bore fruit and to cut those canes back completely. Berries develop on the second year canes so I try to make sure the first year canes stay intact.

The orange things are a few Sungold cherry tomatoes. The first Sungold I harvested this year was May 3. At this point of the year, we are still early in the season, and I have been getting 6-8 cherry tomatoes every two days, just enough for a tiny salad.

more on boysenberries here.

In full bloom: the boysenberry bush on earth day

Took me awhile to get this up. Around April 21, 2013, the boysenberry bush celebrated earth day by being in full bloom.

the summertime boysenberry growth

We are in the middle of gorgeous weather with blue skies and moderate humidity. We just had the remnant of a tropical storm pass through a few days prior. It dropped enough rain to dirty the cars but we still have a bit of humidity in the air. This morning, when I got to my plot, I noticed how the boysenberry bush is working overtime, putting out canes for next year, resulting in this piling of the green. These canes will be the ones to bear fruit next year. In the meantime, one of the tasks on my list is to hunt down this year's canes, which bore this year's fruits, and to cut them back. Good luck, as they are buried somewhere underneath the newer branches.

Boysenberries peaking already

Sadly, we are on the downhill slope. The trick to picking them is to wait until the calyx is brown and the fruit looks shiny. At this point, they should just fall off. Any later, then they are moldy, which is not good.

I find I am eating the ripest berry right away off the vine. If any are left, those are taken home to eat with vanilla ice cream.

When perfectly ripe, the berries fall off the vine readily. I find boysenberries to be fragile. I could not imagine mine would tolerate being sold; they would fall apart.

Boysenberry flowers greeting spring

Funny how the vernal equinox triggers growth. I've noticed each year how my boysenberry gears up big time after the vernal equinox, producing flowers at nearly every node. I like to think they are ready to face the world after dormancy. I'm usually here early in the morning so there aren't any urban bees but later in the day, I usually find there's a bee in each flower, literally.

Boysenberry in bloom

I'm sorry to have dropped out of sight. I needed to find a new photo host site for this blog since I had maxed out my Flickr site. I'm currently using Photobucket and we'll see how that works. I'm not sure if I like the quality of the photos. In the meantime, I will be experimenting with how Photobucket works. If any of you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Thanks!

The Friday Mulch

A boysenberry, fairly ripe. Yum.

Christian Science Monitor has a personal account of community gardening in Chicago.

Eight foods that MAY make you look younger says the hype. Tomatoes are on the list. All I know is that I can't wait for my tomatoes to ripen, and that certainly isn't helping me look younger.

Three community gardens win awards for outstanding garden, all amazing gardens who more than gives back to their community.

So Miracle-Gro is sponsoring community gardens.  What does that look like in reality? Here is an example in Los Angeles, more specifically Boyle Heights. Surprisingly, it is not a Round-Up ready garden; rather, it is all organic. There is hope, people!

Around the Blogs
I'm so partial to kangaroo rats. Here's why at Camissonia's Corner.

Fresh from the garden potatoes are such a delicacy, I think a quiet secret amongst veggie gardeners. I see we've got potatoes developing in Japan and in England.

I haven't tried this nut recipe but it sure sounds good.

A lesson in phenotypic variability, courtesy of the Madia plant.

I'm also partial to photos about fawns, a double dose cuteness over at Curbstone Valley Farm. I guess it's that time of the year.

A tisket a tasket

Not a green and yellow basket but the first basket of boysenberries harvested today.

There's a dance I do with the ripening berries. The longer they ripen on the vine, the darker and sweeter they get. These are the tastiest berries, sweet and warm and without much tang. Very yum. But at this stage, the berries don't fare well at all with picking, falling apart as I handle them. Just means they don't get home to my family, and my fingers are smeared purply.

So for home, I pick berries not perfectly ripe but they make the journey in one piece, more or less.

Boysenberries: filling in the empty spaces

I've noticed in the last month the boysenberry bush has filled in the empty spaces. I've got a mix of flowers and developing berries, which means the season will be a bit more prolonged than in previous years.
Here's what I mean by filling in, taken from about two months ago. Looks a bit bare.

Another angle.

Bee friendly

The boysenberry and blackberry plants have finally erupted in blooms. Of course, the bees are all over them, rather in them, as you can see here.

First green is gold

Thornless boysenberry leaf

Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The first leaf this season, on the boysenberry. I was struck by the gold in the green, almost vibrating.When I revisit the Robert Frost poem, I always forget it ends with sadness, my interpretation of his piece.
Would you think it sadness? Is it possible to have loss without sadness?
I don't know. I do know first green is often gold, especially out in the chaparral after a good rain and especially after a fresh burn.  Funny, there I see the gold as a promise, one of hope.

First boysenberry bloom

An outlier. I predict the rest will flower muuuuuch later. For reference, last year, I noted the first bloom was in March, around the vernal equinox. I suspect the wild weather we've been having in November and December, especially the hot weather, may have influenced this outlier.

In November, I cut back last year's vines to the roots and rearranged the new canes by detangling them and placing them up on the trellis.  Last week,  I fertilized the canes with aged cow manure, the bag does says organic. This week, the canes were mulched with compost from my garden. I see last year's leaves still hanging on, tenacious, so I think it'll be awhile before we see new growth for this year.

Boysenberries in Southern California

David Karp writes about boysenberries in today's LA Times, providing probably the best background I've come across on this berry so far. I hadn't realized how precious they are since they are rare to find and not widely cultivated. I also didn't know they are distinctly California bred plants.

The exact parentage of boysenberry is obscure, but scientists surmise, based on analyses of genes, plants and fruits, that it resulted from a cross of Logan with an Eastern dewberry. It may in fact have been one of the famous plant breeder Luther Burbank's seedlings, which somehow made its way to John Lubben's home in Alameda, Calif., and thence to his Napa County farm, where it was called lubbenberry.In the early 1920s, Rudolph Boysen, who was farming Lubben's property, was crossing blackberries and raspberries, and when he moved to Anaheim in 1923, he took with him some plants growing large, exquisitely flavored berries, which he claimed to have bred.

My berries are peaking in my garden, already!, and I've been harvesting about a pint a day. It's a small but rambling plant, my thornless boysenberries. The cross between the raspberry and blackberry gives them that sweet tart oxymoronic taste. The berries don't last very long off the vine;it's not just that they are tasty but that they are delicate with thin easily ruptured skins. I can understand why they aren't grocery market material; even at a farmer's market, I know mine wouldn't hold up well. Anyways, today I collected two pints, enough to make a boysenberry pie.

Determined nasturtiums

I'm struck by the brash florescence of these nasturtiums, quite photogenic, and with how they snuck in using the thornless boysenberry bush as one giant lattice. If I didn't weed my garden plot not one bit, I would simply have one giant mound of nasturtiums reaching up to the sky.

PS Why I have the word thornless highlighted in yellow above is beyond me.

A berry good time

To help you imagine what my thornless boysenberry hedge looks like, I present you a glimpse of one small window. Multiply this a hundred fold, and you'll see a wall of small green berries sunning in the sun, waiting to ripen.

Thornless boysenberry blossoms

I like to think they have their faces out to the sun, just waiting for the world to arrive, in this case bees. No bees in these shots but be sure they will be there. Happy Mother's Day to all!

Thornless boysenberry ripening

This one is about five days away from being eaten. Just like the blueberries, they plump up before they ripen.

My first boysenberry of 2010

Yup, I ate it. And, sorry, no photo of it in it's last state of ripeness because I didn't have my camera on me but I may not have taken a shot anyway, I was so excited and eager. And it was delish. I think it must be an outlier as I have no others, yet, not even close.

So here is the photo of that same berry, not yet ripe and not ready. I would say it took about a week. It did get much darker, nearly blackish, and it also grew in size.

First thornless boysenberry drupe

I had to take a photo of this, the ripest one so far but still far from readiness. You can see it is reddening, completely ripe when it is much darker, nearly black in color. Oh, I can't wait. I like them when they are still warm from the day's sun.

To bee or not to bee

Whither the urban bee in Santa Monica? I've always wondered where they live because Santa Monica is quite an urban environment.

It turns out if there are any urban beehives located on public property, the Santa Monica city policy is to bring out the equivalent of bee SWAT teams to eradicate and destroy any errant urban bees.

The local Santa Monica press, the Daily Press, recently wrote about a citizen beekeeper's attempt to change this policy.

Be it quixotic or not, he's got an online site as well as an online petition for all of bee lovers out there to sign.

Urban bee visiting one of my thornless boysenberry blooms