If the endless talk of pests and disease in the rest of The Holistic Orchard didn't scare you away, you probably felt the same relief I did when you hit the Berries chapter.  Not only do many brambles and bush fruits bear much sooner than trees, they also tend to be more resistant to problems, allowing you to make selections based on taste and regional location.

I've written extensively about brambles in Weekend Homesteader: February, and Phillips agrees with me on most points.  Blackberries and raspberries are easy and delicious --- select among the many varieties based first on your growing zone and you'll be golden.

Blueberries are tougher for those of us without highly acidic soil, but Phillips offers some fascinating holistic advice there.  First, he reminds us that the main issue with alkaline soil is that it makes iron less available to the blueberry roots, which tend to hunt for minerals right at the mulch/soil interface.  So adding greensand (rich in iron), acidifying sources of nitrogen (such as cottonseed meal), old nails, or sulfur (for fast acidification, in a pinch) right below the mulch is much more effective than struggling to change the pH of the whole rooting zone.  Lots of organic matter is very helpful long term too.  Another issue blueberries have with high pH is excess calcium blocking their taste for magnesium, which can be fixed by boosting levels of the latter.  Finally, if you don't live too far north, southern highbush blueberries or (even better) rabbiteye blueberries are less sensitive to high pH.

Gooseberries and currants don't like high heat, but that same personality trait makes them some of the few fruits that will produce in the shade.  We chose gooseberries in our garden since we like fresh fruits much more than preserves, but jelly-eaters might prefer currants.  Disease is more likely to be a problem with these plants than with other small fruits, though, so select carefully to ensure you get both resistance and flavor.

Interestingly, Phillips doesn't throw in many unusual fruits, but does devote a whole section to elderberries.  I think this choice is due to his wife's profession (herbalism) and to elderberries' healing powers.  In our garden, wild elderberries come up everywhere, and I mostly root them out, but I have let one shrub grow up beside our biggest peach.  The bush attracts lots of pollinating insects, but the fruits didn't pass my raw taste test.

Meanwhile, I was sad to see that Phillips skipped grapes --- they're not technically berries, but I could have used some holistic advice about these fungus-prone fruits.  And I think strawberries merit a place even if they're not woody plants --- they certainly bear like crazy with few issues.

Which fruits did you wish had made the cut?  Do you find some of the small fruits listed more or less hardy than Phillips suggested?

I appreciate you all hanging in there through a mind-bending couple of months considering fruit trees.  Those of you who haven't been reading along might want to check out older posts about beginning a holistic orchard, techniques for designing a holistic orchard, orchard soil health, managing fungi in the orchard, disease-resistant pears, and no-spray stone fruits.

Meanwhile, the consensus is for Joel Salatin's Folks, This Ain't Normal to be our next book club read.  We'll skip Thanksgiving week, then dive right into chapters 1 through 3 on November 28.  Salatin is bound to provoke lots of opinions, whether you agree with him or not, so be sure to find a copy so you can join in the discussion!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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