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What you need to know about growing berries in Southern California

March 25, 2023

Roger Campbell, who gardens in Alhambra, sent an email requesting varieties of berries that grow well in our area. Berries are quite the rage. The reason for this is simple enough to divine: You get lots of fruit from plants whose growth is easily controlled. Unlike fruit trees that take up space and require regular pruning as well as ladders to harvest the crop, a berry plant is easy to manage and harvest. Many berry plants are also container friendly. There is even a special container called a strawberry pot with any number of side windows or pockets that allow you to nurture many different plants simultaneously. Finally, the nutritional value of berries is much documented and highly promoted.

But here’s the problem, based on what I have seen, gardeners often struggle to grow strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so if you want berries with a minimum amount of work, I suggest blackberries, especially the Boysen and Ollalie varieties, due to their strong tolerance to heat. Thornless versions of these varieties are also available. They prefer half-day sun exposure and are most successfully grown up a 4-6 foot fence since, allowed to sprawl along the ground, they are more of a challenge to tend and harvest, especially varieties with thorns.

Blueberries are probably more regaled than any other berry, but growing them is not a simple matter. A number of years ago, reader Roger Lipps extolled the virtues of two highbush blueberry varieties, Misty and O’Neal. Lipps’ plants had grown to a height of 6-8 feet and his harvest was prodigious.

Lipps attributed his success to two annual applications of soil acidifying sulphur, in April and October, and heavy mulching. He applied Tiger 90CR Organic Sulphur which he procured from Whittier Fertilizer in Pico Rivera. The application rate was 1-3 cups per bush, depending on size.

“I just manually spread the granules around the drip lines,” he wrote. “Blueberry roots are shallow and without a 4-inch layer of mulch, growing them would require nearly constant irrigation.”

Lipps wisely installed a drip system for his blueberries, reducing his water budget by 30-50% in the process. His water agency had restricted irrigation to two days a week, but he could abide by that schedule and still keep his blueberry bushes in good health.

“Armstrong is where I purchased many of our blueberry plants,” he confided. “I love their lifetime guarantee.” (Note: Armstrong Garden Centers provide a lifetime warranty on all shrubs and trees.)

Lipps added that “an important factor with regard to growing blueberries is controlling critters. Opossums, skunks and raccoons love moist soft mulch for digging” and so “you must fence your bushes off” and since “birds love blueberries, you must bird net the entire crop if you expect to harvest any.” A redeeming feature of blueberry growing is that the bushes have a lifespan of 50 years.

The challenge of growing raspberries is their sensitivity to our summer sun. They do best in the morning sun, growing on the east side of a large tree, and require regular watering. Bababerry and Oregon 1030 are the two most heat-tolerant varieties. It is generally recommended that raspberries be staked but some gardeners have enjoyed considerable success coaxing their plants into clumps of canes, free of stake constriction.

The most successful grower of strawberries I ever met was Richard Mueller of Granada Hills. Mueller grew the Sequoia strawberry variety exclusively and harvested berries throughout the year. He started with 20 plants and, two decades later, had 200 growing at any one time, giving away another 100 plants each year. When preparing a new area for planting, he would dig down eight inches, fill the excavated area with compost and horse manure, and install new plants after soaking them in a solution of Miracle-Gro fertilizer and water. Two months later, the plants would start to produce berries. Outside of watering as needed, his maintenance regime involved spraying Miracle-Gro on all of his plants twice a month.

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Sunday is the name of a company offering a whole line of organic fertilizers and pesticides, many of them newly formulated, as well as specialty plant species and gardening accessories. You can access these products by visiting getsunday.com. Their Veggie + Plant Food Mix contains “soy protein, sustainably composted turkey litter, potash, and feather meal.” They also carry Monterey Garden Tomato Blossom Spray, a fertilizer that boosts flowering on tomato plants even as it depresses growth of tomato disease pathogens.

California poppy Eschscholzia californica (Photo by Joshua Siskin)

California native of the week: The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), our state flower, is blooming now and its appearance in the garden is always a pleasant event. I cannot imagine why anyone would not scatter California poppy seeds which will sprout as long as they are planted before the weather turns warm. Just broadcast them over the soil surface and they will germinate with rain or irrigation. After you have a crop, the seeds will find their way throughout your garden, in the course of time, without any effort on your part. To extend their flowering period, deadhead the flowers as you would deadhead pansies or roses for continuous bloom. Although their orange flowers, which appear to have no equal in the botanical world, are certainly enough to promote their planting, California poppy foliage is special too. It is delicately laced and blue-green in color most of the time, yet it may take on intriguing purplish-red undertones when flowers are spent and seeds are about to form. The only way you can discourage California poppies from performing gloriously is to enrich their soil. These plants need a well-drained soil but will flounder where organic amendments have been dug into the earth or where fertilizers are applied.

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What you need to know about growing berries in Southern California

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