Do you grow berries at your place?

They’re a fantastic addition to any food garden. One of the best things about them is that you can get a quick yield. It takes years to get a result from your fruit tree, but you can (potentially) get a crop of berries the same year that you plant them.

And getting a quick return on the investment of your time, energy, and money can really boost your enthusiasm.

Plus, berries are delicious, and very good for you.

They’re also a high-value crop that gives you plenty of potential for selling or trading your excess.

And best of all? They’re relatively easy to grow (though of course, being gardening, there’s also lots of things that can go wrong).

What sort of berries should you grow?

There’s a long list of berries to choose from. Some of the more well-known (and easy to source) include:

• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Boysenberry
• Red, black and white currants
• Loganberries
• Tayberries
• Youngberries

Mulberries are also popular, but they grow on a tree, so have the same wait-time as other deciduous fruits. If you want to get a bit more exotic, there are also plenty of less well-known berries that might find a place in your garden, such as:

• Acai berries
• Barbados cherry
• Bilberry
• Cranberry
• Elderberry
• Goji berries
• Gooseberries
• Huckleberries

If you’re relatively new to gardening, we’d recommending getting some experience with the more common types of berries first. It’s easier to source the plants, and easier to get information about how to grow them.

Problems that berries can get

We grew raspberries commercially for many years. So we know first-hand what a successful, in-demand, and high-value crop they are.

Like all food plants, they love healthy soil. Compost, worm castings, and microbe-food are all great soil additions if you want to grow a healthy crop.

Berries also need plenty of water, pruning at the right time, and something to climb up or contain their growth.

But things didn’t always go smoothly, and we experienced a number of problems with them over the years. Our top 5 issues were:

1. Fruit being eaten by birds
2. Protection from the wind, especially hot summer northerlies
3. Protection from sun, particularly in heatwaves
4. Phytophthora root rot
5. Keeping up with the picking

Getting help from the experts

We had the chance a while ago to make a field trip to Sunny Creek Organic berry farm in Gippsland and spent a productive afternoon touring the farm and picking berry farmer Phil’s brain.

We were very interested to see how the experienced folk at Sunny Creek have overcome some of the problems we ran into with the berries.

Boy, did we learn a lot in one short afternoon!

Lessons about berries we learned from Sunny Creek Farm

First, berries need sun-protection all season or they get sunburned. We thought this only happened on super-hot days with a scorching hot north wind, but in fact it can happen at much lower temperatures.

Interestingly, it can also take weeks for the damage to show up. We only grew one variety (called Bogong raspberry), so this may explain why in our years of berry growing we didn’t always realise when sun damage had occurred.

This problem is almost completely alleviated with shade protection (like shade cloth). So, lesson 1—include shade cloth covers in your design from the get-go.

Another topic we were interested in was disease control.

One of the big problems we encountered when we grew raspberries was Phytophthora (a fungal root-rot disease), so we were particularly interested in organic solutions. We came away with a much better understanding of how to manage this disease.

For example, we discovered that raspberries are prone to a raspberry-specific strain of Phytophthora. This means that a patch where fruit trees have previously been affected by Phytophthora may still be suitable for raspberry growing.

We also learned that:

• Some varieties of raspberries are more resistant to Phytopthora than others;
• Brambles don’t get it at all;
• Mounding the soil helps;
• One of the biggest risks of infection is from the public.

Phil also shared information about nutrition, seasonal care, pruning, variety selection, running the pick-your-own operation, marketing, and value-adding.

Field trips to fellow farmers are one of the fastest and most useful ways to learn new things in a short space of time. We know from experience how busy farming life is, and so are incredibly appreciative when farmers like Phil give so generously of their time to share their knowledge and expertise.

It also lets us share the information with you, to help you on your very own berry journey.

So next time you’re over Trafalgar South way, pop into Sunny Creek Farm and pick some amazing organic berries and tell Phil that Hugh and Katie sent you.

And in the meantime, plan to get some berries in the ground this year.