Berries berries berries!

It is berry season at the Wenzel homestead this month!

At the beginning of the year, we invested in two varieties of blueberry bush for our garden. Though they are both still under two feet in height, one of them is actually fruiting!

If you did not know, blueberries need an minimum number of “chill hours” or total hours during the year between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit. And being in Southern California, we don’t get as many of those hours as other parts of the country. Heck! We had triple digits for a day or so around this last Christmas. Yikes, I know! But there are a few varieties that will work in our area. We chose Jewel Blueberry and Sunshine Blue Blueberry, which work with only 150-200 chill hours.

So far we have picked about 2 of the smaller clam shell sized containers of blueberries. Yummy!

To better our chances of being able to eat our berries, rather than the birds getting to them first, the hubby built a bird net cage for our blueberry bushes. It was cobbled together out of left over PVC pieces and bird netting. I think this was actually our most successful attempt at keeping out the bigger critters from our bounty.

The blueberry bushes also need a more acidic soil mix, which is why they are in their very own wine barrel planter. No native soil at all.

We have been trying to cultivate our strawberry patch as well, but we have been waylaid by crabgrass at every turn. Hopefully this last effort will have gotten the bulk of it out. We are so sick of digging and ripping this stuff out! Ugh!

Another addition to our garden has been our boysenberry vines. They were dropped off one day last spring by our neighbors! What a nice surprise! We had no idea how to grow boysenberries, but when has that stopped us? In the ground they went! They grew all year, creeping into our paths and climbing our garden fence. We were wondering if it would ever flower! After consultation with the neighbors and the internet, we realized that we needed to get these vines off of the ground, lest they start to go back into the earth again and re-root. So we created this trellis. We wanted it to be sturdy enough to hold the vines, but also open enough not to be affected by the strong winds we have in this area (Santa Anas!). A month or so after installing the trellis, we started to find flowers on the vines! Yeay!

Now, a few months later, we are barely able to keep up with the berries that have been produced. I have already made a berry-vanilla-oatmeal crisp ice cream and have been eating them with yogurt for two weeks now. We have already started to freeze them, so as not to waste them. This last weekend alone, we have already picked about 6 cups of boysenberries from the vines. We have enough still on the vines to keep us happy for a month or more (and beyond since we are freezing them).

Hopefully next year, we will have the berry trifecta! If we ever get the crabgrass out of our garden (in a safe, organic way of course).

If you have any tips on getting rid of the crabgrass, we would sure love to hear them! Or if you would like our ice cream recipe, all you have to do is ask!