By Sharon Omahen


University of Georgia

This year’s Georgia blueberry crop is expected to be better
than
last season’s, despite the problems caused by an overabundance of
rain in March.

“From an individual standpoint, some of our growers won’t have
as
good a year because we had a lot of rain,” said Danny Stanaland,
the University of Georgia Extension Service coordinator in Bacon
County.

“The wet conditions prevented some farmers from getting in
their
fields on a timely schedule,” he said. “It caused heavy disease
pressure.”

Stanaland said he is seeing some of the worst cases of
botrytis
and mummy berry disease he’s ever seen. And serving Georgia’s
largest-producing blueberry county, he knows blueberries.

Botrytis is a bloom disease that causes the bloom to shut
down.
Mummy berry causes the berries to mummify and fall off the
bush.

Georgia growers began picking this year’s crop a few weeks
ago.
The harvest should continue until mid-July.

New varieties always wanted

Stanaland said blueberry growers are always searching for new
plant varieties to replace aging ones.

“Growers are also looking for the early varieties so they can
be
first to the market,” he said. “That’s where your highest prices
are.”

Blueberry plants mature after five to six years and begin to
lose
some of their redeeming qualities, he said.

UGA horticulturists are breeding new releases that will
produce
higher yields and resist diseases.

Scott NeSmith, a UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences horticulturist, recently released a new rabbiteye
blueberry, Ochlockonee (ok-LAHK-uh-nee). A joint release by UGA
CAES and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s named for the
south Georgia river.

Last year, NeSmith released Alapaha, which should be ready for
farmers and home gardeners by fall. He plans to release three
more new blueberry varieties over the next four years, each named
for a river in south Georgia. Blueberries first grew as native
plants along these rivers.

Ripens later and makes bigger berries

The newest release is touted for its late-ripening ability,
high
yield and medium-to-large berries.

“Ochlockonee has shown high yields when compared to the
late-season rabbiteye standard, Tifblue,” NeSmith said. “In fact,
in a
five-year study, Tifblue’s yield in south Georgia was only 59
percent of that of Ochlockonee.”

Besides growing more berries, Ochlockonee grows them bigger,
especially during its first harvest, NeSmith said. “These two
properties alone make this selection desirable as a highly
productive late-season rabbiteye cultivar,” he said.

Tifblue and Ochlockonee are comparable in their vigor and
their
berries’ color and firmness. And, like Tifblue, the new blueberry
is “favorable” for escaping south Georgia’s spring freeze damage,
NeSmith said.

Ochlockonee may be new to the farm and garden scene, but it
was
actually first selected in the mid-1960s by UGA researchers in
Tifton, Ga. It was bred in Beltsville, Md., by USDA researchers
who crossed Tifblue with Menditoo.

“We know this plant is very durable,” NeSmith said, “because
we
have an Ochlockonee planting in Alapaha, Ga., that’s more than 25
years old and is still quite vigorous and productive.”

About 40 percent of Georgia’s blueberry crop is sold as a
fresh-market product. The rest goes into the frozen-foods market.
Georgia farmers have more than 5,000 acres devoted to
blueberries. Bacon County, in southeast Georgia, has about half
of that.

Try this at home

If you’d like to grow your own blueberries, Stanaland has a
few
suggestions.

“Pick a blend of plant varieties that produce early-, mid- and
late-season fruit,” he said. “This will assure that you have a
good window of fresh fruit all season.”

He recommends rabbiteye blueberry varieties because they’re
easier to grow. It will take a few years for your plants to
produce a lot of fruit.

“After a couple of years, you’ll start to see your home
harvest
grow,” he said. “Just remember, as your plants grow larger, so
will your fruit production.”