World 072821

Summer Harvest and Care of
Raspberries
asy are rasperries are ig in er
and Vitamin C, making them a healthy
snack as well as delicious in jams,
jellies, and desserts. Enjoy the best
flaor and redue pest proles wit
proper aresting and suer are
By Melinda Myers
Pick raspberries when the fruit is firm but soft, deeply colored,
and easily slides off the hard core. Check your raspberry
patch and harvest every few days to avoid overripe fruit
that attracts picnic beetles and other pests. Consider wearing
long pants and a long sleeve shirt for protection against the
thorns and mosquitoes.
Place berries in shallow containers when harvesting and
storing to avoid crushing the delicate fruit. Chill any uneaten
berries within two hours of harvesting to preserve the freshness
and flavor. Wait to wash berries until right before use to
further lengthen their storage life.
Once the summer harvest is complete, it is time to do a bit
of pruning. Remove the canes that bore the summer fruit back
to ground level. These canes will not form fruit in future
years. Removing them now gives new canes room to grow
and reduces the risk of disease.
This is also a good time to check all canes for signs of disease
problems. Look for sunken and discolored areas, cankers,
and spotted, yellow or brown leaves. These symptoms
along with dry crumbly fruit are clues disease, like anthracnose
and spur blight have moved into your raspberry patch.
Remove and destroy diseased canes to ground level as soon as
they are found. This is often enough to manage these diseases.
Summer is also a good time to thin the remaining canes on
summer bearing raspberries. Remove weak or damaged
canes, leaving three or four of the sturdiest per foot of row or
six or eight stems per hill when growing in the hill system.
Wait until next spring to reduce the height of the remaining
canes. At that time, you can determine winter dieback and
damage and prune accordingly.
Fall bearing raspberries are handled a bit differently. Prune
them like the summer bearing raspberries to harvest two crops
in one season. Often called everbearing, these produce a summer
crop on second year canes and fall crop on first year
canes.
Make pruning easier and benefit from an earlier, larger fall
harvest by managing fall bearing raspberries with one prun-
• • •
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department
says any people are aing proles wit
bears looking for food near their homes,
and with the food scrap ban in effect the
departent is proiding tips or people wo
are oposting at oe so tey an aoid
attracting hungry bears.
“We have been receiving lots of reports of bears on decks,
tearing down bird feeders, wrecking beehives, killing chickens,
and getting into trash, compost and garbage containers,”
said bear biologist Forrest Hammond. “We are offering some
guidance on how to compost at home without attracting
bears.”
“First though, to deter bears, bird feeders need to be taken
down until we have a foot or more of snow in December.
Then, make sure anything else that might smell like food is
picked up. And keep your trash container secured inside a
sturdy building and don’t put it outside until the morning of
pickup. Beehives, chicken coops and compost bins can be
protected with electric fencing.”
If you know bears are active in your neighborhood, the best
way to avoid attracting them is to take food scraps to one of
the drop-off stations. You can locate them by contacting your
local solid waste management district or town at
www.802recycles.com, or ask your trash hauler if they pick
up food scraps for composting.
Composting at home while minimizing the chances of
attracting bears can best be done with these tips:
• Use three parts of brown material for one part of green material.
Browns can be dried leaf and yard debris, wood chips,
which often can be delivered to your house free by a local tree
service company, or shredded paper. Greens include kitchen
scraps, vegetables and small amounts of fruits. Adding lots of
brown material minimizes smells and speeds up composting.
• No meat, bones or seafood leftovers. They do not break
down quickly and are strong wildlife attractants. The food
scrap ban allows people who compost at home to dispose of
meat, bones and seafood in the trash, so they can be kept in a
freezer until trash day.
• Give your compost oxygen by frequently mixing it or turning
it over if it is in a container. This reduces odors and
speeds up composting.
• Does your compost smell? If so, turning it, adding more
brown material and adding a layer of wood shavings or sawpage
18 The WORLD July 28, 2021
SUMMER GARDENING | THE WORLD
ing. Cut or mow all the canes to ground level once the plants
are dormant and before growth begins in spring. This pruning
technique eliminates the summer crop but is much easier, less
time consuming, and eliminates any animal and winter damage
in just one cut.
Consider planting a summer and a fall bearing raspberry
patch to maximize the harvest. You’ll enjoy summer raspberries
from one planting plus a larger, earlier harvest from your
fall bearing raspberries when pruning all the canes to ground
level each year.
Grab your favorite berry harvest basket, dress appropriately
and head to your raspberry patch. With every bite of freshfrom-the-garden
raspberry or homemade raspberry treat you
will be glad you took the time to plant, tend and harvest your
own.
Composting with Bears in Mind
VTF&W photo by John Hall
dust to the top should solve the issue.
• Enclose your composter with electric fencing or compost in
a hard, durable container with a lid that will be challenging for
a bear to open. Some types of tumblers are bear-proof.
• Electric fencing, with food scent added to the wires will
discourage even persistent bears.
• If you are currently having a bear issue, delay starting your
new compost pile until the bear issue resolves. Until then,
keep food scraps in the freezer or bring them to a collection
site.
To learn more about properly composting food waste, go to
the Department of Environmental Conservation’s website at
www.VTrecycles.com.
The public is encouraged to contact their local warden if
they are having a bear issue. You can find out who your local
warden is at https://anrweb.vt.gov/FWD/FW/WardenLookup.
aspx. You may also submit a black bear incident report at
https://anrweb.vt.gov/FWD/FW/WildlifeBearReport.aspx.
Contacting your warden or submitting a black bear incident
report helps wildlife officials keep track of bear issues around
the state and may help shape future regulations regarding
black bears.
Composting without attracting wildlife takes careful planning.
For information about living with bears and to report
bear damage, visit Fish and Wildlife’s website www.vtfishandwildlife.com.
Nothing tastes better than a slice of buttered toast slathered
with homemade raspberry jam. (photo: Joyce Amsden)
Raspberry Freezer
Jam: Savor The
Flavor All Year Long!
Is there anything as
delicious as a sun-warmed
raspberry plucked from
the bush and popped into
your mouth?
By Joyce Amsden
Extension Master Gardener Intern
University of Vermont
The flip side of this simple summer pleasure is how
fragile your freshly picked raspberries are and how quick
to spoil. Fortunately, raspberries freeze well and are a tasty
addition to baked goods, smoothies or yogurt. Another
tasty option is freezer jam. Because the berries are not
cooked, the flavor is distinctly fresh.
Here are some helpful tips for making raspberry freezer
jam.
Do some research to learn when raspberries will be
available in your area. The timing varies from early July to
early fall depending on the varieties grown and the location
of the berry farm.
Purchase fruit pectin. Several brands are available, but
check that the brand you select offers a recipe for freezer
jam. Some brands offer a reduced sugar version. Read the
instructions and make sure you have everything you need.
Pick only ripe berries that separate from the core with a
gentle tug. Avoid picking when the berries and bushes are
wet with dew or rain. Wet berries mold very quickly.
The ideal containers for picking are shallow fiber or
wood boxes that can be set into a basket hung from a belt
loop. In a deep container, the berries in the bottom can get
crushed and lead to rapid spoilage. Handle your berries
gently.
If you travel a distance from home in a hot car, consider
bringing along a cooler with ice packs and/or cool the car
before heading for home.
At home, sort through your berries immediately, watching
for debris and squashed or mushy berries. Place the
fruit gently into freezer containers. Refrigerate or freeze
within a day or two to preserve freshness. Immediate chilling
can also prevent any problematic effects of spotted
wing drosophila (https://go.uvm.edu/spw).
No time to make jam? It will be just as good made later
with frozen berries.
Remember, successful freezer jam is dependent on accurate
measurement of the ingredients. Follow the recipe
exactly. Measure carefully.
Whether using fresh or previously frozen berries, crush
a single layer of berries at a time with a potato masher and
measure. A quart-size glass measuring cup works great for
this. Measure the sugar into a separate bowl so that you can
begin again if you get distracted or lose count.
Follow the package directions. This generally involves
mixing the sugar and crushed berries, cooking the pectin
briefly and adding it to the berry mixture. Portion the jam
into containers, cover and let it sit for a time. Refrigerate or
freeze. Your jam will keep several weeks in the refrigerator
or a year (or more) in the freezer.
Six months later as the north wind howls and blows, pull
a jar of jam from the freezer, sit down with a mug of your
favorite warm beverage, a slice of buttered toast slathered
with raspberry jam and revisit the sweet sensations of
summer.