Vintners Harvest Fruit Wine Making Bases Stabalize

[NorthernWinos]

NW
 
I liked the blueberry so much, I planted some blueberry bushes a couple of weeks ago.

Sounds like a good idea to plant some Blueberries. Our soils have a very high PH [7+] so I will have to add a lot of peat moss and feed the plants with acid.I will also have to mulch with straw in winter. The wild ones don't produce well after a winter with little snow and very cold temps...If we have severe winters they will only produce on what was below the snow.

I am trying to find a hardy Blackberry variety. The wild Blackberries also don't produce good every year, when we had them growing on our old place some years they were just loaded, other years they were baren...we never figured out their M.O....but think they bloomed real early and had the blossoms frosted. I use to make Blackberry jelly and pancake syrup...wish I would have been making wine at that time....then I would have dug up some plants when we moved....

Now I search for wild berries around here and buy the Vintners Harvest Wine Bases...One thing about buying the fruit bases...you get a 'bumper-crop' with every order.

 

[grapeman]

NW
Do you have white pine trees nearby? If so rake up the needles and mulch with them aroung the blueberries. They are naturally very high in acid.Podzolic soils typically found with the pine are very low acid soils(pH4.5-5.5) and the trees contribute to that. Around here the best wild blueberries grow in the pine barrens where the trees are thinner due to poor soil or fires.

 

[bj4271]

NW


I planted them in large pots. 1/3 peat, 1/3 pine bark mulch, 1/3 topsoil.

 

[sangwitch]

My wife's Grandfather has been after me to make him some elderberry wine so we drove over to the local wine shop yesterday and picked up acan of theVinter's Harvest Elderberry. I'm going to make it up in a 3-gallon batch. I've never tried the Vinter's Harvest before.

 

[bj4271]

NW,


I was just looking at your pix & info on the steam juicers from last year. I just got (lots of arm twisting) a Back to Basics steam juicer for Christmas. Now all I need is my orchard to start producing.


When you stored the juice, did you use canning jars exclusively? Did you freeze it? I was thinking about using left over juice bottles (plastic) from the 64oz bottles I've been using for wine from juice & freezing them. Did I read somwhere that the juice from the steamer doesn't expand noticeably when freezing?

 

[NorthernWinos]

bj...I put my steaming hot juices into hot sterilized mason jars and sealed them.....I think you could freeze the juice too, if you have space....don't think it would hurt anything.

 

[NorthernWinos]

NW
Do you have white pine trees nearby? If so rake up the needles and mulch with them aroung the blueberries. They are naturally very high in acid.Podzolic soils typically found with the pine are very low acid soils(pH4.5-5.5) and the trees contribute to that. Around here the best wild blueberries grow in the pine barrens where the trees are thinner due to poor soil or fires.

Where we use to live was many pine forests...the wild blueberries grew in evergreen plantations owned by the paper companies...everyone picked berries in there.
Up here on the prairies pines don't do real well, too high a PH, tho we had planted 2000 Norway Pines in 1999, they were doing pretty good, got about 4 feet tall...then...a couple winters ago my hubby left some corn along a nearby field to feed the deer...they moved in to that shelter belt and killed about 1500 of those trees that winter...The deer will walk miles to eat a White Pine, those are their favorites.
We have planted another 100 Norway Pines in a shelter belt in front of the house, those are doing well because they are so close to the house. We have some large spruce trees in our yard and see some spruce trees in the natural forests around here, those and red oaks are pretty deer resistant, but grow so slowly.
I went to a garden meeting on growing blueberries, the Professor said to dig a big hole for each plant and put a bushel of peat moss in the hole...guess I will try to do that someday...I need to make more gardens and have a 'wine garden'.