Not to belabor the point, but I can't seem to shake the excitement of growing some berries this year. Which of course got me to thinking... what can be learned from this endeavor?

Well, I've made the job a tad easier on myself by making the decision to grow them in pots with a removable cage of bird netting first off. This takes a lot of the pest and soil issues out of the equation. Secondly, it'll allow me to get my feet wet with regard to fruit plant maintenance when it comes time to have my own land. Because remember, my goal here is to have my own bit of land and install an orchard that contains fruit and nut trees as well as clusters and/or possibly rows of berries.

To that end, I was reviewing the Stark Bros website, along with some online articles (one of which I mentioned in a previous post), and some resources I picked up at Amazon. Needless to say, there are plenty of things to be mindful of when it comes to fruit production. For example, you need to know the basics about soil prep, fertilizing, pruning, and harvesting as well as pest control for things like aphids, cane borer, and leafhopper. And then there is disease control for stuff like botrytis fruit rot, leaf curl, and orange rust.

That, obviously, isn't the complete list of issues that need to be monitored, but you get the idea. There's a lot of stuff to consider. For convenience, I download the Stark Bros growing guides from their website and placed the PDF files on the Research Downloads page. You can find all of their growing guides by visiting their website and accessing this page.