Posted on 01/14/2025 6:52:26 AM PST by Red Badger
““Disease spread could also be impacted by agricultural conditions,” Bradshaw said. “Some areas that grow blueberries in tunnels, or enclosed areas, seem to have worse disease outcomes than areas that grow blueberries outdoors without any covering, like in North Carolina.””
And Georgia. Where my mother-in-law lives there are blueberry farms for miles....................
Masks will help. In fact, they are essential.
I grew up in Maine, and there were blueberry patches for miles and miles, many times along powering pathways. Maine is big on blueberries. Most kids worked raking them to earn summertime money. Xpent many many hours gathering them with the family as a child.
Doh, along power lines i meant
Bad news for Jersey. Ranks 6th in blueberry production.
The best blueberries, and the healthiest in terms of antioxidant content, are the organic wild blueberries from trader Joe’s. Highly recommended.
And 6 feet between bushes.................
Crap! My favorite fruit.
That must be why there is no unfrosted blueberry pop tarts available.
😁😎🙄..................................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnosporangium_juniperi-virginianae
For some reason, reminded me of cedar apple rust.
When farmers figured this out, cedar tree were eliminated from the landscape. Now the govt promotes cedar trees.\
In the Midwest we used to have a rotation. Corn sb alfalfa to control disease.
“..Most kids worked raking them to earn summertime money....”
Yep. I was one of those kids waaay back in the 1960s. Growing up in a large family that was pretty much dirt poor in eastern Maine, it was the only way to make enough money to buy new school clothes and shoes. Cutting lawns all summer just wasn’t enough to do it. Raking blueberries paid $2.25/bushel after winnowing out the sticks & leaves. That was the going rate back then, and anyone that’s ever done it knows that it takes a lot of hard, back-breaking work to garner up a bushel. It definitely taught me the value of a dollar back then. We’d even fight over the better sections of the field to try and increase our portion...LOL. Man, that was ages ago.
FWIW, they’ve since gleaned almost all the big boulders and rocks out of the fields and primarily use some pretty sohphisticated mechanical harvesting methods to garner the crop now. They can harvest a good-sized field in a manner of hours compared to several days by doing it manually the old fashion way. There is still some secondary manual raking performed to clean up the corners of the field or around where boulders were just too huge to move., but it’s nothing like it was back in the day.
The SciTech Daily is over dramatizing this issue. I don’t usually read this kind of stuff but for some reason it intrigued me (probably because of the attack on the food industry). Bottom line from the study which was conducted from an economic impact point of view, mainly gathering data from the last five years: the fungus is mainly found on plants that are grown indoors, and it is found in localized groups or areas (those who grow indoors). The data doesn’t show a rapid spread, but They “theorize” that it may spread more.
Oh....I also forgot to mention, I still have my 60-tooth blueberry rake to this day although the blistered hand has long healed up. I kept it as a keepsake and a lifetime reminder or what it used to like to make a dollar bill.
I just had a bowl of blueberries this weekend. They were a little mushy, not crisp. But still good. I hope they save them. And the bananas. And bees. Otherwise it will be impossible to eat yogurt.
Did they find which USDA Bio-lab sponsored it yet?
How many blueberries in a bushel? Did you get 55 cents for a peck?
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