Q uestion: I have some questions about my small fruits. I have a few strawberry plots and the plants are so thick, I think I need to thin them for air circulation. Can I take some of the runners off the plants and just move them, or do I need to dig up and move the entire plant?
Also, do high-bush blueberries pollinate low-bush varieties, or do they all have to be the same type for cross-pollination?
Lastly, I have a bunch of different raspberries, but I can’t tell the varieties apart. Is there some way I can prune them all that won’t hurt any of them?
Answer: Let’s take each of these questions in turn.
Strawberry patches typically need to be redone every three or four years. The best way to do this is to dig out about half to three-quarters of the mother plants, leaving all the newly rooted runners intact. These mother plants should be discarded, as they won’t fruit as well after one or two seasons of production. The remaining runners also should be amply spaced. If they are too close, dig some of them out and move them to a new site.
High-bush blueberry varieties will indeed pollinate low-bush selections and vice versa. Nearly all blueberry types (including my favorite, the half-high varieties) will cross-pollinate with each other as long as they are in bloom at the same time. Blueberries are pollinated primarily by our native bumblebees. The vibrations they generate are required for loosening and transferring the pollen in the plants’ bell-shaped flowers.
As for your raspberries, there are two ways you can prune all the plants without having to worry about which one is which (though it’s far better to specialize your pruning techniques according to the particular raspberry type — a topic I’ve covered many times in this column).
You have two options. In the late fall or very early spring, cut all the canes that produced fruits during the previous season to the ground. Once raspberry canes have fruited, they will not do so again. Leave the canes that have not fruited intact, as they have yet to produce.
The second option is to cut all the canes clear back to the ground in early spring. This makes for a “clean� raspberry patch, but will prevent any varieties that produce two crops per year (one in early summer and another in late fall) from doing so. Cutting all the canes back to the ground means only one crop per year, and it will occur in mid-summer.
Send your gardening or landscaping questions to tribliving@tribweb.com or The Good Earth, 503 Martindale St., 3rd Floor, D.L. Clark Building, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.
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