June and early July is a time of the year when there is very little fruit ripe in the garden. The exception is the berry.
Generally, we start harvesting Raspberries on June 1st and have a bowl of Raspberries each morning for about the entire month. Last Fall we had to cut the Rasperries to ground for some workers to put in a fence and because of this we have not had any yet. How do we get Rasberries in June you might ask? Well, first of all we planted the Heritage variety which has very strong self-supportive canes. At the end of the fruiting in the Fall, I cut the canes to be about 6 ft high and only keep the strongest of the canes. These mature canes will then sprout and have fruit by June 1st. Meanwhile the new canes will sprout and give us a second crop in August and September. Even though the second crop is larger, the first crop is what we all remember since we have not eaten a Raspberry for 10 months!!
This year we have been blessed with our first real nice crop of Blueberries though and I tell you, without the Raspberry stealing the show, these berries are becoming the star!! The kids eat them evey time they go in the yard and the grown-ups hardly get a chance to partake. Well, I took it upon myself today to do my own picking and was rewarded with a cup of some of the best berries you could imagine.
The other reward this year was our Strawberry patch. Really not officially in our yard, but a shared planting in a little strip of land between us and our neighbor. Kind of an island, it stays pretty snail and slug free...and if you are growing Strawberries you know what a slug can do to a nice juicy berry.
...and for the 4th of July, we harvested:
1) Two zuchini ($1.00)
2) Two apriums ($1.00)
3) One white nectarine ($1.00)
4) One cup of bluberries ($2.00)
Total (Year-to-Date): $22.50
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