Ep. 232 The Cranberry Story: Native Roots and Modern Agriculture | #Good Growing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. The the, oh, ever present cranberry. It has been a staple of this country since well before the Europe ans showed up, part of the Native Americans culture diet. Ah, yes.

American cranberry. That's what we're talking about today. And you know I'm not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. It's it's one of the best times of year. Cranberries are showing up. Not that you can't find them be around, but they're extra, like, prevalent, I guess, this time of year.

That's right. Yes. See, you I found my cranberries today, and and and I know also why you like this time of year because people start playing Christmas music again, which I still say, boy, I'm one of those curmudgeons that say wait till after Thanksgiving before I get that Christmas music going. I don't stop. So It's all year for Ken.

Christmas lights are up and

So excited, everyone. It's favorite time of year. Well well, we we have been going on some deep dives of of cranberries, I think, this last week. Ken, you found us a great book to read. So I've we we tried to read as much as possible.

Like, I think we split it in half. You read the first half. I read the second half, and I got, like, halfway through the second half. I'll say that much. But

I halfway through the first half.

There you go. So the this podcast will be halfway there, not all quite the way. We'll do the other half next year. But, yeah, let's let's talk about cranberries. And I I guess kick us off, Ken, since you had the first half talking about sort of, like, the the origination of this particular fruit, tell us about what is the cranberry and the history of it.

Yeah. So cranberry is a a native plant to The United States and Canada. It's one of the, I guess, handful was the three main native fruits cultivated on a kind of commercial level, cranberry, blueberry, and concord grape for our for our native fruits that we have in The US. There's others, but not really wide widely grown like these are. It is actually native to Illinois as well.

So people I think usually when people think of cranberries, they're thinking out Northeast Massachusetts and stuff, but it's actually native to the Upper Midwest, up into up into Canada. So in Illinois, it is native to, the Chicago area, so it's at Lake Cook, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties. I don't know if you can find cranberries growing natively there anymore because you've never been up there. I'm not sure how many of the bogs still exist

Still in those areas. They've been paved over or there's a 80 story skyscraper on top of them. So, yeah, long gone.

Yeah. So these are these are do grow in in bog or or wetlands, typically bog. So like in Massachusetts, I'm assuming other places as well. Kind of these kettle bogs, so glaciers came through, kind of scoured out these indentations in the ground. They can have a a clay layer, which doesn't let water seep through at all or very quickly, and then that's over time been filled in with plant debris and created a bog.

So this is where we're finding these a lot of times in those those those wet kind of acidic conditions. And for as far as the name cranberry, that comes from the flower. So the the flower on these kinda looks like a sandhill crane. So, originally, the Europeans called them cranberries. Over time, somehow the e got dropped, and we get our cranberries.

And they have been harvested probably thousands of years by indigenous Americans. Early settlers would harvest cranberries as well. This is gonna be by hand. And in that book so the book is America's founding fruit to cranberry in a new environment by Susan Playfair. Got some interesting stuff in here on on the chapter called the first cultivators.

So the pilgrims, they actually had rules set out, ordinances in 1773 on how you could harvest cranberries. So any person should be found that any person that should be found gathering cranberries before the September 20 exceeding one court shall be liable to pay $1 and have the berries taken away. That they shall find any person gathering shall have them, in the dollar, and any person should be found gathering cranberries on the Sabbath shall be liable to double punishment. So I mean, they're quite desirable, and even some of the the native Americans, they also had rules about when you could pick. You couldn't pick unripe berries.

You had to wait for a certain time to pick them as well. So they're kind of a high demand crop, you know, they can keep for a long time. They're high in vitamin c. So, you know, we start getting into more colonial America with ships. You know, they're popular barrels of cranberries on ships, you get your vitamin c to prevent scurvy and stuff.

Whereas, like, in in England and stuff, they're using more limes. In The Americas, we're using cranberries a lot of times to get that vitamin c. And, really, the the first cultivation how we think of it as cultivating, like, intentionally growing plants and caring for them instead of just harvesting or gathering them from the wild, began in 1812. And that was what was his name? Henry Hall, who was a former schooner captain, noticed that cranberries that were growing by the sea would have sand blown in on them, and that would cause them to grow up.

You have better production and stuff. So we actually started collecting the vines and planting them, fencing that area off to keep cattle off, and would sand them and stuff like that. And that kinda got the the cranberry production started in Massachusetts, and then, you know, that more and more people saw that and got interested. People in New Jersey had similar growing conditions, also had native cranberries started it, and they were bringing some of the, I guess, varieties from Massachusetts because as people were harvesting, they're selecting ones that have bigger berries, darker colors, different desirable characteristics, and some of those we're still using nowadays from some of these varieties that were chosen from back in the eighteen hundreds. Started bringing those down to New Jersey and growing them.

And then eventually, it's kind of moving out into Wisconsin and the West Coast as well. So, you know, I think, typically, again, when people think of cranberries, I think of Massachusetts, but Wisconsin is actually the largest producer. About 60% of the cranberries grown in The US are grown in Wisconsin, kind of in in Central Wisconsin is the main area there. And I think they're the the largest producer in the world, because really there's not a whole lot of production outside The US. Massachusetts is about 25 ish percent, and then we have Oregon, Washington, and New Jersey also will raise cranberries commercially.

Now and one thing I saw, you know, reading about this, there's not there's not, like, a tremendous amount of growers. I mean, it's maybe several 100 I mean, couple of several 100 people doing this, but, you know, it's not a, you know, a massive scale. I can even see some of these other crops, apples, specialty crops and stuff. There's this fairly, say, fairly limited size when you think about kind of the number of growers and even the acreage, being used for this.

Yeah. I I I it was an interesting dive into history, I I will say that much. It it went into the formation of all of these cranberry growers associations to try to protect some of these farmers, which did kind of consolidate a lot of the the growing in these these various different groups. And so there's really only, yeah, a handful of, like, organized organizations, kinda umbrella organizations that these growers fall under. Probably the most popular one of those is gonna be Ocean Spray, which is actually founded by not a farmer, but a lawyer founded Ocean Spray.

And it's sort of to get around some of the antitrust laws because they really just started bringing all of these farmers together in in in into one group. This happened really right around the Great Depression, right when antitrust laws were in full effect. And so there is an exemption though for agriculture. And so then the lawyer then said, we are all ag. We're all farmers, so now we're we're exempt from these antitrust laws.

And I I think I'm drawing this line in my own head, but it seems like a lot of the cranberry grower farmers, a lot of the the processing, a lot of the cleaning, the packaging, all of that that happens post harvest, that all also happens on the farm. And so I wonder if that's all part of the the we're all farmers. We're not canners. You know, we're not we're we're all farming this. So I wonder if that's part of it.

But, yeah, a lot of the the cranberry growing is is is kinda concentrated in just a handful of people in groups.

Yeah. And since they need those those kind of specialized conditions, you're kinda limited to where you can grow them to begin with. Mhmm. I just wanna and and in this book, they're talking about a lot of these are not terribly large acreage that they're growing. These on it, maybe a handful, twenty, thirty acres, something like that.

These aren't massive. Mhmm. That's really at least people they were talking to, and she was talking to in this book, are not massive operations. I'm sure there's some out there, but a lot of them are more of that that family farm type level.

Mhmm. But in the beginning, you know, Ken, a lot of these were dry harvested, as you mentioned. And then kind of that thing that that Ocean Spray and and two other actual there's so there's three of these associations they figured out. You know, if we could process these, maybe we could sell them at a different time of year. And so really in the nineteen thirties, it's when a lot of people started shifting away from, you know, doing a lot of their own processing at home.

It began to shift from jars to canning, like in tin cans. And so people were going to the store and buying canned goods more frequently at that point in time. And then it really started to ramp up once we got, you know, thirties, forties, and then everything was found in the grocery store. And that one story that I I read in in my part of the book was that in old country stores, you know, it was very common for there to be a barrel of cranberries by the cash register. And these would have been dry harvested, which they last longer.

They have they have better storage capacity for that. And so they would just they would sit there, the counter, the customer would come up, say, I wanna pound. The the shopkeeper would would take their big scoop, kinda weigh it out or eyeball it sometimes, and then they could banter or argue about if that's actually a pound of cranberries, all that. And so but then the all this processing work gonna happen, and then they started prepackaging cranberries, fresh cranberries in this case. And then that barrel of cranberries disappeared, and then they started seeing these prepackaged cranberries show up in other parts of the store, and then grocery stores started popping up.

And then these canned goods started popping into the grocery stores, these these cranberry sauces. And then but but anyway, the the the story basically kinda went on to say the disappearance of the cranberry was the first nail in the coffin of the old country store. So I don't know if that's necessarily true or not, but that's that's how they told the story. That's how they spun the yarn.

Everything goes back to cranberries.

I guess so. Yeah.

And we we talked I think we'll talk about harvest more. But really, like, when we're first, you know, going out and just harvesting wild, doing this by hand. And then as we we start getting into more of the the cultivation of it, that's when we start getting into the to the rakes and stuff. And you see it faster. Harvest is still really slow compared to the the water that's done now, but, yeah, even then, they're still have kind of these advances on harvesting and and getting more of it and stuff.

And and you mentioned can Wisconsin has a lot of cranberry growers, and you had found that there's actually tours you can take in, like, September, October in Wisconsin while they're harvesting. So folks check out, like, I think it's the Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association. You can find and find where they're harvesting cranberries up in Wisconsin and go visit them.

Yeah. Massachusetts has it too, but Wisconsin's a lot closer.

Yeah. So Yeah. And and the interesting thing, you know, again, there's these different umbrella corporations. The biggest probably the most well known one is going to be Ocean Spray. And when a farmer basically enters into a grower contract with Ocean Spray, Ocean Spray says we want 100% of your cranberries.

So they have to negotiate for that farm store, that farmstead, that agritourism side of cranberry that then they're allowed to then pull and sell. And so that again, very interesting read. Yeah. Put the the title of this book down below so folks can can pursue it.

Yeah. I I think it will actually try to finish this book instead of leaving it a quarter ready.

That's right.

And I will say it does have I even really looked through it. It does have a recipe section at the end. So Mhmm.

Yeah. And there's quite a

few of them in there.

It does have some, like, really interesting quotes also at the beginning of every chapter. I will share my favorite, and it is it is about the harvesting process. This is on chapter nine, and it equates cranberries to cats. So I'll just read this quote to you. The cranberry submits to cultivation, but it retains that savor of wilderness that is its birthright.

It cherishes that as a cat, its spirit of independence. There are little things as well as great that cannot be tamed, cranberries and cats, as well as winds and waters. This was written by Cornelius Wagant from the piece Down Jersey in 1940. So I will say, oddly enough, when I've read that quote, I had a cat on my lap at home. So now I'm eating cranberries.

So, you know, that this untamable cultivated plant and animal.

So I think we've we've kinda covered this, and there's a lot more to it, but we're just kinda giving you the the dirt. I don't even know if this qualifies as the cliff's nose version of it. But

This is this is part one of a 10 part episode on just the history of cranberries. There's a lot there probably.

Yeah. So I I think one thing to talk about, you know, we've we mentioned harvest and and how they're done by water. So, basically, the the fields will be flooded. They have a a machine come through. A lot of place people describe it as kind of like an egg beater, and it just stirs up all the berries, and the berries float, which is which is important.

That's the reason why we can flood the fields to do this. And that is because if you've if you've never seen a fresh cranberry, you can buy them this time of year. I think we both have identical bags of cranberries.

Yes. We do.

There's just little red. Some of them can be really dark red, almost black to to lighter red. And some of them, you know, the the little more white ones are probably aren't quite as ripe. But if you cut one open, we got these and we could take a picture of this to put it in expranitic. We don't see very well in the video, but Yeah.

We got these four chambers in here that are filled with air, and that's what allows them to float in the reason why the bogs can be flooded in order to harvest them. Mhmm.

Yeah. The the the different colors, I I I that was a very neat part of this book where they talked about the different colors. Sometimes you'll see, like, the whitish cranberry. And so here, there's, like, a dark side and there's a lighter color side. They said sometimes that coloration difference is just part of that fruit might have been buried a little bit, might have been hidden underneath a leaf, or might have been just on the bottom side of the plant.

And the part that was more exposed, the sun's usually a a darker red. You know, some of the the interesting things about, like, when you do wet harvest versus dry harvest, like, the wet harvest, they, you know, they really have a certain window they need to get it all done. Dry harvest, you still have a window to get it done, but it it seemed like they could push that window a little bit later when the more berries would be ripe, more darker red. And some of them that are grown like out in Oregon, they can really push that window pretty late because of their more moderate climate that they have, and they can get sometimes a much more sweeter berry. Because I don't know, Ken, have have you tried your cranberries yet in terms of flavor profile?

What are we talking here?

I've I've put a dent on my bag here.

Hey. Here you go. It's like popcorn.

I'll say there's a reason there's usually a lot of sugar added to cranberry products. They are rather tart. And even then, you you mean you can do these berries. Some of them are a little sweeter than others. Again, I think usually the darker ones, at least ones I've eaten, tend to be a little bit sweeter, not quite as as tart.

Don't don't pucker quite so much.

I've had a like, just been eating the darker red ones. I'm gonna try this lighter color one. I I also have a piece of chocolate, which I will tell you folks, if you're just eating raw cranberries and you got a bar of chocolate nearby, take a little nibble of chocolate every time. It is it is really good. It is delicious.

I'll try the white one. Yeah. There's definitely there's definitely some tartness to the lighter colored ones.

Yeah. You gotta power through that.

Yep. Alright. Look, chocolate.

With the dry harvest, from what I've read, they they wait until those plants are completely dry. So if you have a dew or something like they're letting those go completely dry, before they harvest. Because when they're wet, you know, the wet harvest, that's gonna reduce the the shelf life for them. So the the ones we're getting in the bag, those are all dry harvested. And that's that's only, like, 5% or something like that of the cranberries that are grown in The US.

Only, like, 5% are dry harvested for that that fresh market.

Yeah. So the that wet harvest cranberry is really it's for that processing market, and it was that attempt to expand beyond Christmas and Thanksgiving, I think, for the cranberry growers. So we wanted to try to sell or offer something at different times of the year. And they they would routinely say, oh, we are just stuck, at least in The United States, at Thanksgiving. We're we're kinda stuck a little bit at at Christmas.

But then they started to market this globally, and they have have had a lot more success. Now, Ken, you had already mentioned their big buyers that they have over in Europe. Like, what, Germany is one of the biggest one over in Europe. China's becoming very popular of a buyer. I think growers are getting a little nervous once China figures out that they can grow this too.

They don't need to buy from us. But but that global market has really expanded and and kind of necessitated this wet harvesting method. And so but but, yes, dry harvest gives you that fresh berry. It allows you to make your own cranberry sauce if you wanted to. And I think it it is pretty neat to have just like that that berry in hand.

And and they do keep. I think what the number Ira is they keep for, like, three ish months, sometimes longer, the the dry harvested berry. But the wet harvested one lasts maybe three weeks until they're moldy and mushy and they're no good anymore.

You know, that wet harvest, you got that that wheel, that bar spinning, and that's gonna bruise them and stuff. I'm sure just sitting in water Mhmm. Probably doesn't help all that much either. It's a

vector for bacteria and fungus.

But I will say speaking of processed cranberries, the best cranberries, they have limes in them.

Ken just held up a can of cranberry sauce for those listening.

The jelly to cranberry sauce. Mhmm. Not the not the chunky stuff. It's gotta be smooth.

Yeah. Just don't like the ingredients

and the amount of sugar in there.

Yeah. You get your day's allotment of sugar in one serving. And and, folks, one serving is not the entire can. We found that one out too as Ken was reading the ingredients before we started recording.

Yes. For the particular can I have, it is six servings per container, and one serving is 48% of the the sugars per a 2,000 calorie diet? So keep that in mind this Thanksgiving. Yes.

Load me up on that cranberry jelly. I I will share so we do have a nutrition wellness team, and so they do have some recipes. And one of those recipes was for cranberry pumpkin muffins. Actually, it sounds really good. So I think these are gonna be something that we're gonna try, and it uses dried cranberries.

I think when you go to the store, you'll find you'll find dried cranberries. More often than not, they're gonna be dried sweetened cranberries. And so these are cranberries with so there's been sweetened, of course, with sugar. I think this particular one, though, it calls for dried unsweetened cranberries if you can find that. If you can't, you can also use fresh or frozen cranberries as well.

So I'll throw that recipe down below.

I don't know if I've ever seen unsweetened dried cranberries. I don't know if I've ever looked either. But

I it's it's just a pucker in a bag. I mean, that that was the thing that made dried cranberries so popular was back in the day, people used to love to eat raisins. Then the cranberry growers were like, hey. We can do that too. We just add a little bit of sugar.

And we have our, what, craisins? Is that what they're called? Yeah. That was a big big thing. Like, one I guess, anything else we wanna talk about with the with the cranberry fruit?

I I did wonder because whenever you get the jelly or whenever you, like, make the sauce itself, it's always red, bright red. But when you look at the flesh, it's white, and it's crispy like an apple. I just thought I just thought always thought it was interesting that that red coloration doesn't go it's just skin deep. It doesn't go through to the flesh. And there's plenty of seeds in these two, which don't really bother me when I'm eating them.

I I don't know if they bother you, Ken, but yeah.

No. You don't really even notice them. I should say these are related there in the same genus as blueberries.

Both bog type plants. I don't know.

Yes. I'm not sure how that fits into anything. But

I don't know. Is that the Arachaceae family? I I can't remember. I used to know these things.

It's the cinium. Don't have

to know them. What is it?

Vicinium is the genus. Vicinium? I don't know. Or vaccine. I don't know how to pronounce it.

V a c c I n I u m. Yeah. Eric a c.

Eric a c a. I wanna know who Eric was that he got a whole family of cool plants named after him. Okay. So we we did talk about sort of, you know, the history, the background of blueberry or blueberries. Thinking blueberries now, Ken.

Cranberries or the the the an animal anatomical makeup. Atomical. Is that a thing? The anatomy of a cranberry where it has the those hollow chambers that allows it to float, works great for wet harvesting. The other thing is the in this the book that we read, Ken, it really seems to talk about the boom and bust of the cranberry life that, again, we are really focused on a particular season where a lot of the cranberries being used are used for, like, a month out of the year, at least in The US.

There's other byproducts that are also used. So they're, you know, food additives, trail mixes, things that you might find cranberries in. But the bulk that we we think about for for our cranberries is Thanksgiving, really. And so if you're a farmer, though, your goal is to get more yield at maybe the same amount of land. Maybe you expand.

You but but the idea is you want more yield. Like, all farmers, that's that's, like, what they do. Like, that is their life's goal. More yield, same amount of land, try to do less inputs. But when you are so constricted to a sub such a seasonal product like the cranberry, they really get hit hard in these boom and bust years where cranberries sometimes are just flooding the market.

The supply is just way beyond the demand that that that exists. And so this has been something that has been happening, and there was recently a bust around the turn of the century once we entered the twenty first century around, like, nineteen ninety eight ish, 2000, a big bust year for cranberries, bust couple years for cranberry growers. So, you know, I I just think that that is just more kind of inspiration for these growers to process these berries into other things that can be used throughout the year and shipped than across the planet.

Yeah. I know the parts I read too. Some of the the growers she's talking with and following along, a lot of them have jobs outside the farm too. Mhmm. So you don't have necessarily the acreage to do just cranberries.

Right.

Yeah. So I guess, Ken, maybe we should, like, go through a year at a commercial cranberry farm and and see what that is like. I don't know. Did your section get much into, like, this annual cycle of of cranberry growing from the farmer's perspective?

Yeah. So they parts are already in there doing talking a lot about planting. So they you know, they were maybe renovating a bed or something like that. So we won't talk about that and then get into the the cycle. Sure.

So this so with these, basically, they'll go in and then so they've got an old field that you wanna plant. Some of these can be a 100 plus years old. I don't know if the plants themselves are actually a 100 years old, but they've been they were planted a 100 years ago, and they haven't replanted stuff like that. So say they wanna go in, you know, yields are declining. They wanna put something new in.

They'll go in. They'll level off the ground so it's nice and flat. Lot of times, they'll square off the fields so it's easier to harvest and stuff. And they'll come in and put sand down, couple inch layers of sand. And some of the videos I've seen that you basically have this a lot of times, they'll do cuttings of them or just the they'll just have the vines with roots on them, and they'll just kinda go out and sprinkle them on the field.

It's like they're spreading, you know, feeding chickens, that kind of that motion. Just like look at it, they're almost like spreading mulch process. And they're coming through, at least one of the videos I watched, coming through with basically a tractor that's got some small discs on the front, and that's pushing those plants into the sand. There's a roller bar behind it to smooth everything out. And there you go.

It's it's much more kinda time consuming than how I just described it, but that's basically what they're They're pushing those those those vines into the ground so they'll root down it through that sand, into the the soil beneath. So they're gonna have to keep up with the watering until it happens. And they've got irrigation running through there, for frost protection, for irrigating during the, the growing season, which we can get into. And a lot of it's becoming more and more automated.

I saw that it reminded me of so there's a technique for, like, establishing turf grass with, like, warm season grasses. It's called sprigging or stolonizing, and it is essentially that process. You take, like, the zoysia grass. You just basically tear tear up a whole thing of zoysia grass, and then you just spread it out on a prepared soil surface. And you could, like, put it in trenches or you could you can disc it in or you could top dress with with compost or something, but that is almost the exact same thing that they're doing here.

In my head, I was kind of thinking like, oh, well, they must have, like, people out there planting individual plants. Nope. They are just scattering plant debris, plant vines on the ground, and letting them root themselves into this prepared sand bed. That was pretty neat. And you mentioned, like, the squared off fields.

It's like a giant sand volleyball pit for for giants. There's just this big, long look like they're bigger than football fields. Maybe I don't know. I I didn't get any dimensions on them, but they're just very big sand fields.

They will say one of the in this book, one of the people they were she was talking with, I think they were doing they were rooting the cuttings and then putting them in the ground. So I get the sense that a lot of the people are doing more like the vines or they're they haven't the what you described, the kind of the cut up things, and they're spreading that out. And and these vines can get six feet long, something like that. So they'll fill in that area.

So if you like a lot of commercial growers, if you're going to do the wet harvest, a lot of them are gonna have, like, an irrigation trench surrounding this field. So you're sort of up here on a levee, you go down into this irrigation trench, and then you're on then you come back up onto this, plateau of what the that field is. But where does all that water come from that that they have to flood that that bog with when they go to harvest? So one of the I I I think it it neat thing, and this is something that the cranberry growers, they sort of like to promote, is that for every acre of cranberries in production, it takes seven acres of water storage or sort of sort of like habitat space, wetland space. And so they say that cranberries can contribute to increased habitat around their farms because they're at a ratio of basically seven to one of, you know, water storage area to plant a cranberry field.

So that they I I think that sounds like a pretty neat way to go about growing a crop.

Yeah. It's not wall to wall cranberries.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the farms, they talk about all of the wildlife on there and which is they said is good and bad. You know?

It's The word sort. That's right.

So yeah. Yeah. So this is the spring. So there's a lot of this planting that's taking place in the spring. And then, you know, we're watering to get those plants established.

And and if this is a mature field, you know, their watering is needed, but think it was like, lot of things about an inch of water through rain or irrigation is what these plants are gonna need. Then going into the summer, we start seeing flowering taking place. So it's early June, you know, depending on on where in the country you're at, but most of these are more northern locales. So June time frame, again, we got those those flowers that kinda look like a crane. And then I've read conflicting things on this.

Some thing places will say that cranberries can't pollinate themselves, but they're not very efficient. Others saying they can't pollinate themselves at all. So I don't know what the truth is, but regardless, insects are gonna be important. So a lot of, growers are bringing in, managed hives, so honeybees. Some are bringing bumblebees.

And bumblebees are gonna be, much more efficient at pollinating cranberries. You know, our native bumblebee species, evolved with with cranberries and stuff, and they'll do that buzz pollination, the sonication, where they vibrate their bodies, vibrate the flowers, that releases the pollen. It's gonna be much more efficient than honeybees, which don't do that, but honeybees kinda make up for that in just sheer numbers. And I and I've saw some stuff where a lot of you got a lot of these growers in those areas, those those seven acres where you're not growing cranberries, you're putting in pollinator habitat. So you can get more of those, not necessarily have to bring and manage these maybe quite so much.

The thing that I I read also was, especially up in Wisconsin, where you do have a lot of this habitat, they would bring in these honeybee hives, and the the other plant that's also blooming at the same time as cranberries is buckthorn, non native invasive species. And it has a much you mentioned that that that odd awkward shaped flower. Buckthorn has a very easy flower for bees to access the the pollen nectar reward. So they've the cranberry growers are saying, all of our bees that honeybees that we're bringing in, they're going over and pollinating the buckthorn. They're not pollinating the cranberries.

So, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense to cultivate maybe pollinator habitat that you would have adjacent to your property because they're gonna have to control that the invasive species anyway because they're they're competing now for that pollination of your crop.

Yeah. I did read some stuff about it. They gotta get the timing right. This is more Massachusetts, but I assume it'd be other places too. And if you bring your hives in too early and there's no flowers out there, they're gonna find something else, and they're not necessarily gonna come back to those cranberries because they don't necessarily have a lot of that nectar, some of those resources that that the bees want.

So you gotta get the timing right. I think they were saying about 5% of the flowers you got 5% flowering. That's when you wanna bring the hives in so you're not

Mhmm.

Losing those bees to other places. So then after you you get the pollination, we're gonna have the the fruit starting to develop, and they'll start green, and then they'll start transitioning into white. And then late summer, we're getting we're starting to get our our shifting from green into that red color that we are most familiar with.

And then the fun time, harvest, fall. So I guess this sort of depends whether you're going to do a dry harvest or a wet harvest. It did seem like a lot of the organically grown cranberries were doing dry harvest. And a lot of their buyers were sort of those very big organic markets like Whole Foods and and and, you know, those popular chain stores that that that sell that are known for selling organic products. That takes a lot more labor.

But but so for if you're doing wet harvest, you're basically going to keep getting started, was it, like, kinda late September into October, and you would begin flooding your field. You run that that egg beater machine that you did described, Ken, and it essentially rakes the vines, loosens the berries, and they float because they got those chambers inside of them, which also, I I guess, is that was the seed dispersal method for the plant itself since it's kind of bitter. You know, it wasn't relying necessarily on wildlife. It was relying more on flowing water. Just that's kind of an interesting way to do it.

So there you go. Cranberry. Seed dispersal method, water. So the the machine loosens the berries. They float.

And then the berries are then gathered either by by another harvesting machine. You know, the Ken mentioned a lot of this is becoming auto very automated anymore. Or, you know, you see people hand floating these towards an elevator at the corner of that bog, which then, you know, pulls the cranberries out, puts them on semi trucks, and and and moves them. So but I think a lot of us, myself included, when I thought of cranberries being harvested, I think of that wet method with people pushing these big long boards or plastic boards, pushing them towards this part this part of the the bog where the machine takes it out, but that's what I have in my head.

Yeah. Those are the big floats that they're they're dragging along. Yeah. They've got the basically, a big vacuum, more or less, sucking them in Yeah. Sucking them out into the into the truck, we'll then which will then take them off to the to the plant and stuff.

And for your dry harvest, you know, you traditionally, that was done basically with the wooden rakes. Think like a hairbrush, like a pick. Give all these all these small tines so you can scoop that, and it's got a kind of a a scoop on the back so you collect the berries. Just take that, break that over the plants. That's gonna the stems and the leaves will pass through there, pop off the berries, and dump them.

Nowadays, it's the machine kinda looks like a maybe a lawnmower or a sod cutter, if you're familiar with those look like. And it's kinda got the same thing those times, and it's just breaking those up, tossing them into a bag or something like that. And they'll take those bags off, put a new bag on, and keep going. So even the dry harvest has become mechanized, and you don't need an an army of people to go out and harvest my hand like you would, you know, two hundred years ago.

Yeah. They'd be on their hands and knees picking and combing and yep. Yeah. And and so for the wet harvest, once they they finish, they've they've vacuumed up all the the cranberries off of the water. That field is then drained.

They filter that water, and they move it on to the next bog in their harvesting process. And that that's just the the cycle then then continues until everything's picked for that year. But they're not done yet. There is more.

Yeah. So they're moving in into the winter. So in December, a lot times, the the fields will be flooded. That's gonna keep plants from desiccating, protect them from really cold temperatures because these are evergreen plants. They're gonna retain their leaves.

So they'll flood those. A lot of times, that will freeze. In their case, the ice is gonna insulate them, protect them from the those cold temperatures. And then one part that I'd you know, I didn't know about this until we started looking into this is they will go through and sand the fields every three or four years. So, basically, what they're gonna do a lot of times, they're doing this when on ice.

So once the ice gets three or four inches thick and they can drive heavy machinery on there, more or less, they'll drop anywhere from a half inch to an inch or so of sand on that ice. Then when that melts, that's gonna drop down onto the plants. It can also be done, again, I've seen videos, like, basically, they're just blowing it onto there, or they'll drive machinery through, but they'll sand these fields every three or four years. And that sand is gonna kinda smother the vines and force them to grow up, and that vertical growth is what's gonna produce the fruit. So if you just let them grow on the on the ground, you're not gonna have as much fruit production.

The sanding is also gonna help with some pest management. If you've got full year diseases, putting that sand down is gonna bury that potentially. You know, there's minerals and stuff in that sand so you can providing some nutrients to the plants as well. But then the, you know, the timing and and how much you put on there is gonna be critical. Know?

I mentioned in the book, you know, too early or too much or too late and too little can have can have some effects. So but they are gonna do that. And that's, you know, that natural process we, you know, talked about in 1812 when they noticed those, that sand from the dunes being blown on the fields. So this is a natural process that we're this process naturally happens, and we're just doing it, you know, in a in a more managed way nowadays. And then, you know, as as things start start melting, you know, the the they'll drain the fields.

And sometimes they will do a late flooding. Again, this can help with pest management. This is not an every year thing. I think it's what it's every every few years, every three years, something like that. Maybe they'll do this.

But they will also set up irrigation. We get started into to late winter and stuff when we start. Those plants are maybe gonna start growing again, setting up irrigation so they they can mist plants if we start getting late frost. If you're familiar with citrus down in Florida, they'll do this for strawberries in Florida. They will run irrigation.

And as water freezes, it releases a little bit of heat. It's kinda counterintuitive. But as long as you keep adding that water and it keeps freezing, it's gonna protect, you know, those the buds and stuff on those plants and prevent them from getting killed. And so some places referenced that they may run-in the irrigation twenty, thirty times a year in the winter and spring in in Massachusetts and stuff to protect from from these freezes. Because you you freeze out, you lost your crop.

And in this book, they talk about, you know, basically, it's a a sixteen month growing cycle. So, like, your new buds are forming while you got flowers on the plants. So you you get a real bad one. You could wipe out maybe subsequent crops too depending on when when the freeze and stuff is. So frost protection is a really big thing for cranberry bogs.

And that's where the automation comes in, where they've got sensors. They can tell when temperatures are getting too low, they can kick that on, you know, from their phone. They don't have to go out at two, 03:00 in the morning to to do all this.

Potentially losing two seasons worth of crop, that sounds pretty scary. You know, because peach growers, they do something similar when they get these late frosts. They will irrigate their trees with that heat effect from the the ice forming. But, you know, they have one year's crop they gotta worry about right then, not two years. That would be, yeah, a little bit more dicey.

Well, Ken, you've you've found this great book. You've got me reading again. I've been looking into all these different cranberry things. I now want to grow these. I wanna grow these in my backyard.

I'm growing blueberries very successfully, and I want to add a family member from the blueberries. Maybe right maybe I'll put them right right near each other. And so yeah. Can I do this in my backyard? Can I grow cranberries?

Yeah. You probably could. So, yeah, again, you're gonna be depending on what your soil pH is like, you're gonna be amending it because, again, they're like those acidic soils was four and a half, five Mhmm. Somewhere in there. Four to four four to 5.5 is is what they want, and, you know, maybe the soil is a little bit sandier.

So you found a few references where, you know, if you've got let's say for most of Illinois, we're gonna have heavier soils. You dig out eight inches. Some places will say put some kind of plastic liner down and poke holes in it. Again, help retain some of that moisture. I'm thinking that if I were to try this, I may just get one of those plastic preformed pod liners.

Mhmm.

I don't know if they make nice square ones, but you may may have a kidney shaped planting of this. But I need you're gonna put your peat moss, and they're saying four bales per 50 square feet. They're gonna mix in bone meal, rock phosphate, blood meal, Epsom salts in with that to kinda get some of your fertility in there. And then you put your your plants in there, and then you could top that with sand. But you're gonna have to do some soil amending.

Mhmm. Now we we did find one. Who is that from? Massachusetts cranberries, so to make your own bog in a cup. So they're with this, they're doing a half inch layer of clay at the bottom, about a half inch layer of gravel, three quarter inch layer of peat or potting soil, and about an inch of sand, and then you put your cranberry cutting into that.

And that's kinda mimicking those those kettle bogs. You got the gravelly and the new organic matter on there. So with with some amending, I I think we're we would have enough cold so that they would get there so they need that chilling time as well to properly produce. So I think we would we would have the right conditions to do it.

Yeah. I'd I'd I'd I'd like to give it a try. So I think I will. I think in a previous show, I showed that the pH of my soul in the backyard is 5.5. So I I might be well on my way to Yeah.

Growing further. Cranberries. Yeah. Yeah. Don't need to fight the pH as much.

I I was thinking about, you know, again, growing cranberries in a yard or maybe folks in Southern Illinois, whereas maybe we get warmer winters. You know, how might that that relate? And it is interesting to see the the the diverse landscapes that these cranberries grow in everywhere from New England, Wisconsin, which seems like the harshest of all the environments, Wisconsin. Winters, I'm thinking about. But then in Oregon, they they'll grow throughout the North Northeast or Northwest.

And on the South Coast Of Oregon, the average summer temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit. That sounds amazing. And then but their winter average temperature is 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and they still grow cranberries out there fairly successfully. It is a little bit more windy out there. But because you have a such a low growing crop, you can pretty much build some kind of windbreak either out of plants, trees, or structure to protect it from any excessively drying winds.

And the the Oregon growers, they're usually four to six weeks ahead of the Wisconsin growers. So, you know, I'd I'd say, folks, if you aren't interested and you're not sure if your climate's quite right, maybe give it a try. I mean, the Desert Southwest probably will struggle. The Southeast US might might be a little too warm for for these guys. But, you know, Southern Illinois folks, I'm thinking about you.

You know, maybe maybe give it a try. I I I lived there a long time ago, it seems like now, and it got cold sometimes.

I don't think you have to get they're chilling. It doesn't have to get down below freezing. I think if you're in the forties for a couple months, it should be it should be okay. So I haven't done an extensive amount of of research into this, but just looking before the show a little bit, trying to source plant material may be a little difficult. You need to make sure if you're buying looking for cranberry plants, you're not getting a viburnum.

You're actually getting the the vaccinium because there's a cranberry bush viburnum. A lot of the stuff that's popping up when you search cranberry plants for sale is viburnum. So double check the plant description before you buy something.

That that gets in the really murky territory because there's a European cranberry viburnum as well that can be easily mistaken in a nursery. Actually, we had a restoration project where they were hoping to plant American cranberry viburnum, and the nursery sold them the wrong one. And the European one is quite aggressive and difficult to kill. Might even become invasive one day. I don't know.

But it it was it was a nasty one out there. So, yeah, I guess, take a close close look. That that that's only a better reason for us can to go tour these cranberry farms next fall and talk to them, you know, grab some cuttings from them or something. All legally, all above the table, of course.

Yeah. I'm assuming you can grow from seed. I don't

know Mhmm.

How tricky that would be, but and I would it may take a while because I know for commercially when they're putting new fields in, it's usually two or three years before they're harvesting. So

Yeah. The I in the chapter of the book I'm reading right now, it's about hybrid development. I mean, we're talking anywhere from eight to fifteen years before, you know, a hybrid gets discovered or created to it's in its first field. So so it's a long time. I think probably because most cranberry fields are being planted with asexual cuttings out there from the mother plant.

I'm guessing that there's probably gonna be a lot of variability in these seeds. It's gonna be like planting a pumpkin seed. Don't know what you're gonna get there in the next year.

You could have the next great

You could. Cultivar. Right? You could have the most bitter cranberry ever known ever known.

Just have to wait a few years to find out. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm not sure if you'd have to if you have to cold stratify

or not. Still a lot more to learn. We could probably go on for another hour, Ken, with all the stuff that we've gone through. But but maybe we'll we should cut it off here. I also gotta figure out how am I gonna flood my cranberries in the winter because it's right by my house.

I don't wanna flood my house. So

Pond liner.

A pawn liner. There you go. Pond. There you go. I'll have to raise the lip up a little bit higher.

I was get the skating rink.

Oh, yeah. That would be nice. We don't get it doesn't get that cold here anymore, though. Doesn't freeze like it used to. So, anyway, yeah, that's a future me problem.

Well, that was a lot of great information about cranberries, and we'll have, you know, more info down below. Ken, you wrote a great blog article about cranberries also a few years ago. So that I think that was super informative as well. So definitely include that one in there. So well, the Good Growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Ken Johnson.

Ken, thank you for hanging out with me sharing all of these excellent cranberry resources. This is a great book, so I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. Everybody go out and enjoy some cranberries this Thanksgiving and December and throughout the year. It doesn't have to be just this time of year.

Get your canned cranberries. I have all all year long. The fresh ones might not be all year. But, yeah, take your cranberry, get your piece of chocolate. I think this is delicious.

This is my favorite thing ever. Although the the book did talk about vodka and cranberries too, so maybe I'll try that after the

show. Good growing after dark. That's right. And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. Oh my goodness. It's the eating season. Well, I like to call it Thanksgiving is coming up along with a couple other events. So Ken and I, we're gonna be off gallivanting around the state of Illinois, just just having fun, learning, and then eating turkey or whatever bird you like to eat, Ken.

A hoofed animal. I don't know. So we're gonna have some garden bites coming at you these next couple of weeks. So well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, that is listening. Or if you've watched us on YouTube watching, and as always, keep on growing.

Well, listen or blah blah blah blah blah Yeah. There we go. That cranberry is getting to me. No vodka yet. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening.

Or if you're watched us on YouTube watching, I said that wrong.