Growing Cloudberries

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Growing cloudberries in the garden

Well, the gardeners have grown to the extreme … It would seem that everything is already in our beds, in our gardens, on our beloved six hundred square meters, but, no, not everything has been dragged from the forest … And laziness is to blame. Well, a person does not want to go somewhere, it is far to the market, and it is expensive there, and even further to the forest. Yes, and after work, there is no strength left, and on weekends I want to rest, and not to roam around the swamps, to feed mosquitoes. In addition, there are many who wish, so there is no certainty that you will find something. And I still really want to eat a fresh berry. At the mention of blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries, blueberries, redberries, cloudberries, saliva immediately comes up.

So the man came up with the idea to keep everything at his side. This is how the blueberries, which have already become familiar and commonplace, and blueberries with lingonberries, and even cranberries with redberries, slowly moved to our plots. But cloudberries in the garden are still a rarity! While abroad, all these cultures are already commonplace. And this is understandable, because they know very well that the fruits of these cultures are very rich in biologically active substances, without which modern man can no longer survive. The largest number of cloudberry plantations is concentrated in America and the Scandinavian countries, where industrial plantings of these plants have already been created and even the first varieties have been obtained.

Cloudberry is a modest representative of a truly royal family of Rosaceae. It is a low, rarely exceeding a height of 35 cm, a perennial herb with long, creeping rhizomes. The fruits resemble raspberries (prefabricated drupes), but they are lighter in color. Cloudberry is a fairly winter-hardy crop, but not everything is so simple with it, northern plants are even more difficult than southern ones, they adapt to our conditions. From the correspondence on the forums, I managed to find out that it does not grow either in the Leningrad region, or in the Moscow region and even further south. However, at the same time, there are reliable facts that in the conditions of the Voronezh, Lipetsk, Oryol, Tambov regions, this plant feels great.

Propagation of cloudberries

Today, the simplest way to get good seedlings and thereby provide yourself with berries without any expense and effort is to “steal” cloudberry bushes from the forest. It is better to go to this "business" with the whole family and choose the best plants, those that attract large and beautiful berries, and the taste, of course, is of no less importance. Having noticed the desired specimen, it must be carefully, better with a lump of earth, to be dug from its "familiar" place. In this case, you can immediately move the cloudberry plant into a flower pot or, even better, into a paper bag, which can then be planted in the ground without removing the seedling from it, which will save the root system from unnecessary injuries, and the paper will quickly dissolve in the soil.

There is also a way, it is more humane, but already requiring a lot of trouble. It is not for the lazy - to cut the cuttings of cloudberry plants in the forest and root them at home in a greenhouse. The cuttings are cut into small ones - 12-13 cm, then they are planted in a nutritious substrate, covered with a film on top and watered abundantly. The main thing is to prevent the soil from drying out in the summer. It will be very good if the air humidity can be kept at a high level. By the fall, the cuttings will take root, and they can be transplanted to a permanent place, or they can be left in the greenhouse for another season, where the plants will get stronger and will already be more prepared for transplantation.

You can get cloudberry plants using seed propagation, but in this case, the plants obtained will be very different from those from which you collected the seeds, and not always for the better, but often the other way around … Well, finally, you can just go and buy varietal a seedling, but this is bad luck - there are no our varieties, and the imported ones, most likely, will freeze out, unable to withstand our harsh and long winters. It's worth a try, though.

Soil preparation for cloudberries

The place where your pets will grow is chosen based on the conditions in which the seedling was before you dug it out or cut the cuttings. Favorite soils for cloudberries are moist, slightly acidic, sufficiently fertile soils with good aeration and light. It is also necessary to remember that almost all forest and even marsh inhabitants (including cloudberries) have a kind of helper in the form of mycorrhiza - these are useful for the plant, and for the soil too, fungi that are located on the roots and contribute to a more stable plant development, especially on insufficiently rich soils. When planting plants, you can add soil from where you brought it from. If reproduction takes place using cuttings, then you can purchase these beneficial microorganisms at a flower shop or in a store,where seedlings or seedlings are sold, they are inexpensive, and the benefits from them are great.

In the future, industrial cultivation of cloudberries is also possible, as, for example, in Finland, where the world's first experiment on greenhouse cultivation of cloudberries is underway, and the first positive results have already been obtained. The essence of this method lies in the fact that cloudberry seedlings, which are purchased so far from us, in Russia, are planted in greenhouses, where certain conditions favorable for plants are created. As a result, with proper care and maintaining constant humidity, temperature, illumination, which are controlled using high-precision sensors, you can get cloudberries almost all year round with a harvest of up to 8 kilograms from 100 square meters of the area allotted for this crop. The profit from this method of cultivation is significant, because today the prices for cloudberries there range from 8 to 10 euros, that is, almost 400 rubles per kilogram!Our scientists were also involved in such an economically attractive experiment. In the future, as a result of selection, it is possible that promising cloudberry plants will be obtained, and then already varieties.

Cloudberry is a useful, valuable, unpretentious crop, growing it on your site, you will not go wrong

There are other little-known fruit and berry crops that can be grown in your area.