Berries Are a Bargain in Their Bare-Root Form

For the next few weeks, five bucks--at least at one nursery--will get you 20 strawberry plants, which works out to 25 cents a pop. Strawberry plants are a bargain in January and February because they are sold bare root--without soil or in nursery containers.

Each plant will produce a basket or two of fresh red berries in spring--enough for shortcake--and probably another in the fall. The strawberry harvest does not come all at once but lasts for weeks or even months. Even in summer, a small bed of strawberries will produce enough to slice over that morning bowl of cereal or to put on pancakes or waffles.

Strawberries are not the only berry bargains at this time of year. There are also blackberries, blueberries and raspberries available bare root at nurseries.

But strawberries take the least amount of garden space of any fruit and can even be grown in a container with the berries spilling over the sides, safe from slugs and other garden marauders.

Nurseryman David Diaz of Hortus nursery in Pasadena grows strawberries in his home garden, around an Anna apple tree, and thinks nothing could be easier. They don’t even need much amending of the soil at planting time. He digs in a little peat moss, and that’s it.

Strawberries like good drainage so Diaz grows them atop rows of mounded soil, 3 to 4 inches high. Growing them in raised beds would also provide drainage. He fertilizes twice in spring with fish emulsion.

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Sometimes he covers the mounded rows with black plastic, then punches holes in the plastic and plants the berries in the slits, as is done in commercial fields. The dark plastic prevents weed growth and keeps the ripening berries clean.

He’s just finished an annual ritual--digging up the berry plants in late fall, dividing them into small plants and then replanting the healthiest. You can also start over with new plants each year, but don’t expect plants to produce for more than a year without being replaced or reborn. Strawberry fields are not forever.

When planting, it is important not to cover the “crown” of the plant, which is an area just below the base of the leaves that actually looks like a regal crown. If this is buried, the plant will die.

Diaz thinks the Seascape variety tastes best and is the most productive. He’s also grown Chandler and good old Sequoia, with its huge berries. Tristar is a USDA introduction that bears even on unrooted runners (most won’t), so it makes a fun hanging-basket plant, with the berried runners dangling below the pot.

His favorite strawberry, however, is a little wildling that is not available bare root, but in pots, called fraises de bois or alpine strawberries. He grows his under an orange tree and says the fruit is incredibly sweet and the fragrance “unbelievable.” It’s a bit like eating a delicious perfume, though the berries are small (less than half an inch across).

“I really like to sprinkle them on my morning bowl of cereal,” he said. “It’s a great way to start the day!”

Alpine strawberries produce all the time but never in great amounts. They like partial shade and fairly frequent irrigation and will self-sow in the right spot. There’s also a yellow-berried version, with a taste that hints of pineapple.

Blackberries

Though they bear fruit for only a couple of weeks in late spring or early summer, blackberries and blackberry-raspberry hybrids (which are simply called blackberries most of the time) are practically weeds in Southern California.

“I don’t think Californians realize how easy berries are to grow,” said John Bagnasco of Armstrong Garden Centers, headquartered in Glendora. He’s on a campaign to get more people to try more kinds of berries, and he grows most in his Fallbrook home garden.

Blackberries picked fresh and ripe are remarkably sweeter and tastier than those bought at a market or even from a stand.

“There’s no comparing them,” Bagnasco said.

At the bottom of a slope, draped over a chain-link fence grow the trailing blackberry-raspberry crosses such as the tayberry, youngberry, olallieberry, loganberry and boysenberry with arching, trailing canes to 12 feet and more (though they are usually shortened to 8 feet in gardens).

A true blackberry he grows is a large-fruited variety from Texas named Brazos that he calls “kinda tart.” But it grows more compactly, like a raspberry, with canes that are 4 to 6--sometimes 10--feet long. Another pure blackberry is the new Black Satin with large, sweet fruit and more compact growth.

The hybrid variety named Logan is tart but gets sweet if it is allowed to become truly ripe. Really ripe berries are so loosely attached that they almost jump into your hand.

Bagnasco thinks the youngberry is sweeter than Walter Knott’s introduction named Boysen, “the 1935 berry sensation,” according to an old Armstrong catalog. That contention might get some argument since boysenberries have a lot of fans.

Olallie is a vigorous vine, producing tasty fruit, while tay has a strong berry flavor that is “not puckery.”

There are thornless varieties of Boysen, Logan and Young that have slightly smaller berries and are less prolific. Blackberries can be covered with stickers, so thornless varieties might be a good idea in cramped quarters.

Blackberry suckers pop up everywhere, and the suckers of even the thornless kinds are often quite thorny. Just yank them out of places where you don’t want them.

Plant the trailing kinds of blackberry-raspberry hybrids where they can cascade over a fence or can be tied to it or a trellis. Canes are biennial--they grow one year, produce berries the second year. This is important to know because canes must be left to grow for two years, then cut off. If all the canes get pruned every year, there will be few or no berries.

To simplify this sometimes confusing process, Bagnasco only cuts off canes that have just finished bearing fruit. That way he doesn’t lose track of what’s been pruned.

His plants grow in ordinary soil and get watered but not often. Avoid extremes of wet or dry.

Other berries

Bagnasco also grows the one raspberry that does well in Southern California’s mild climate--the bababerry, discovered in an Idyllwild garden.

Originally from the East Coast, Bagnasco is a big fan of raspberries, which are more of an East Coast berry than the blackberries. Bababerry is the exception and even manages two distinct crops a year, in spring and again in fall.

He also grows blueberries but not just any kind. He grows Southern Highbush types, which need little winter cold and can grow in an alkaline soil, such as the Sunshine Blue variety.

His plants have been in the ground for four years and are only about 18 inches tall. He gets a berry-basketful of blueberries from each plant. Supposedly, they will grow to 2 or 3 feet tall, and he finds that he must water them more often than his other berries.

Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.