[HN Gopher] The Lost Art of Growing Blueberries with Fire
___________________________________________________________________
The Lost Art of Growing Blueberries with Fire
Author : RyanShook
Score : 69 points
Date : 2020-07-12 22:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| zwieback wrote:
| Interesting - I live in Oregon where we grow tons of blueberries
| but not the wild kind. I always wondered how they are different,
| apparently mostly grow in the Northeast US and Canada.
| kitotik wrote:
| They are generally vastly more nutrient dense than the non-wild
| variants.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I dream of wild blueberries and refer to the cultivated kind
| (even the "cultivated wild" kind available frozen) as 3D
| printed blue spheres.
|
| They don't travel well, so you're unlikely to find them fresh
| outside of Ontario, Quebec. You need Boreal forest for good
| ones imo.
|
| I don't understand why they're hard to find in Toronto when you
| can find a roadside stand a few hours north that has them,
| often trucked from more hours north.
|
| Lots grow well around Sudbury because the nickel smelting
| plant's acid rain made it even better for acid-soil-loving
| blueberries.
|
| Similar with Lac St Jean region in Quebec that had a massive
| fire.
| cgh wrote:
| > They don't travel well, so you're unlikely to find them
| fresh outside of Ontario, Quebec.
|
| They grow in massive quantities in BC. They are a major food
| source for black bears and their frequently-encountered shit
| is packed with seeds from the berries.
| leafmeal wrote:
| Indians in California (and it sounds like many other places in
| the US too) burned annually for a plethora of reasons. I'm
| learning about this in
| https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild which
| explains how native Californians actively maintained the
| landscape.
|
| From what I remember from reading, burning
|
| - increased growth of grasses in spring to feed native grazers
|
| - encouraged fresh shoots from plants to grow long and straight
| which made them useful for basket material and arrows
|
| - kept meadows open and barren of trees which encouraged grazing
| and made hunting easier
|
| - captured and cooked insects such as grasshoppers for food
|
| As California has suffered so much recently from wild fires,
| we're learning how seasonal burning was also import for
| preventing catastrophic fires.
|
| Places like Yosemite were described by early white settlers as
| resembling a park, with large, spaced trees and grass beneath.
| You could see from one end of the valley floor to the other. With
| modern fire suppression, this is impossible, and many of the once
| vast meadows are now filling with encroaching pines.
|
| This barely scratches the surface of how fire was used to manage
| land resources by California Indians. I highly recommend this
| book if you're interested in Native American practices,
| California history, land management, and native plants.
| beamatronic wrote:
| I guess you can have fire-managed, healthy forests OR permanent
| human dwelling structures but not both at the same time.
| mlillie wrote:
| Thanks for bringing up this book. Everyone who lives in
| California and thinks about nature needs to check out Tending
| the Wild.
| kleton wrote:
| Is this carbon-friendly, or is there a more modern way to
| accomplish the same goals?
| francoisp wrote:
| the more modern and hip way is to use not-a-flamethrower
| cortesoft wrote:
| I would imagine it is fairly carbon neutral... you are burning
| things that grew over the last year. You aren't releasing new
| carbon into the air.
| ry_co wrote:
| This isn't quite right. Technically it's carbon neutral, but
| the alternative method is carbon negative, as a larger
| portion of decaying matter will sequester carbon into the
| soil than would if you didn't burn. So the reality is that
| this is not carbon neutral compared to the alternative.
|
| Of course, there could be some hidden factor I'm missing, as
| biological systems are complex.
| ip26 wrote:
| biochar is actually considered a carbon sink, because the
| carbon is not readily released, unlike organic carbon.
| mc32 wrote:
| So burning forests or seasonal burning like in Indonesia is
| carbon neutral from that perspective?
| cortesoft wrote:
| Seasonal burning probably is carbon neutral.
|
| Burning forests, not so much (at least by standard
| definitions of carbon neutral). 'Carbon neutral' requires a
| reference frame; we usually mean from the perspective of
| the people doing the carbon releasing. If you burn a forest
| that you planted, you are carbon neutral. If you burn a
| forest that has been there for centuries, you are not
| carbon neutral.
| gnat wrote:
| tl;dr: Native Americans would burn the Maine grassland to
| stimulate blueberry production. Most of the plant is below the
| surface as rhizomes, and cutting or burning the above-ground part
| of the plant will stimulate the plant and boost harvests. Burning
| is preferable to cutting because it also kills funguses and
| insects.
|
| The article follows one grower. For more info I found the UMaine
| extension program document useful:
| https://extension.umaine.edu/blueberries/factsheets/producti...
| [deleted]
| exhilaration wrote:
| _Burning is preferable to cutting because it also kills
| funguses and insects._
|
| So what's interesting is that article says that many (most?
| all?) other bluberry growers also burn, but they spray oil
| which burns very hot. This includes modern Native American
| tribes. The grower featured in the article burns straw, which
| is the traditional way of doing it.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I live in Maine and grew up here.
|
| Field across the road used to be a blueberry field, and one of
| Wyman's huge freezer facilities is a few miles down the road,
| along a now discontinued rail line.
|
| Now its a high school. Ahh, goodbye nice friendly traffic
| pattern, I miss you.
|
| That said, I don't think they've actually stopped burning
| blueberry fields, every so often I hear someone talk about it.
| It doesn't seem to be a _lost_ art, just a lesser practiced
| ones. The kind of wild blueberries we have up here (not those
| fat ugly tasteless ones other states grow) seem to require it
| from time to time.
| sharksauce wrote:
| > Field across the road used to be a blueberry field, and one
| of Wyman's huge freezer facilities is a few miles down the
| road, along a now discontinued rail line.
|
| > Now its a high school. Ahh, goodbye nice friendly traffic
| pattern, I miss you.
|
| I think I know exactly the town you're talking about.
|
| During my time Downeast I was told I should cut down the wild
| berry bushes we had growing all around our driveway every
| autumn. Hell with that, said I. Next year, with no berries, I
| figured they might have a point.
| hirundo wrote:
| On a hike we found dozens of ripe blueberry bushes at the
| trailhead and along a fire road to the trail propper, so were
| expecting lots more for the rest of the hike. But the berries
| stopped when the trail started. Turns out they love the roadside
| disturbed ground but don't do so well among established plants.
|
| That's admirably anti-fragile, but comes with the downside of
| being fragile to peaceful domesticity. But it makes for a good
| pioneer or colonist.
| andai wrote:
| "I do a lot of things by choice that people don't do anymore, and
| I'm only finding more and more reasons to keep doing them."
| jonstewart wrote:
| The previous owner of my house planted a few blueberry bushes
| (not the lowbush wild ones of Maine that should be burned/pruned
| after every year of fruiting). I've always thought of blueberries
| as inferior to strawberries and raspberries, but now I wonder why
| so few people have blueberry bushes! Picked ripe and eaten fresh,
| they're delicious. A little care when planting, mulch and peat
| moss in the spring, regular watering, and you've got blueberries
| to enjoy every morning for a couple weeks in summer.
| kitotik wrote:
| "I do it for the human culture as well as for the agriculture"
|
| A beautiful sentiment that the world would be much better off if
| more food producers shared.
| jessmartin wrote:
| "But he didn't set out to become a _torchbearer_ for a historic
| agricultural practice; in fact, he never intended to become a
| blueberry farmer in the first place."
|
| Good one.
| tpmx wrote:
| Are these the small, tasty blueberries, or the giant not-so-tasty
| (but instagram friendly) blueberries (referred to as "american
| blueberries" in Europe)?
| ip26 wrote:
| The large ones can be delicious, but you have to buy them at
| the right time & from the right place.
|
| Not unlike oranges. They are available almost year round but
| they are exceptionally delicious for only a few weeks.
| tpmx wrote:
| Ah.. interesting!
| flyingfences wrote:
| These are the small, tasty ones.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-07-14 23:01 UTC)