Russian varieties disappointing, hoping for better German success

The last three months we have been putting together our sea buckthorn harvest processing site. Its function is simple. To freeze down the branches and then separate out the berries from the leaf and branch and finally to grade the berry for marketing. We are farmers by trade, but developing this site has raised the issues of selling a food product direct to market so food hygiene becomes an issue. On Monday the site was inspected by our local Environmental health officer. Like all new experiences we had no idea what to expect. The site has been designed to be able to maintain high hygiene standards, so thankfully the work passed inspection.

The fact we do not have much of a crop is an issue, but with the Latvian varieties now in, we look forward to the German varieties next. It seems that the Sirola was also effected by poor pollination with some plants berryless. We Brix tested both Sirola and Habego yesterday – 13.4 for sirola and 7.6 for habego. The consideration is that Sirola will be ready by the end of the week, but Habego is at least a fortnight off ripening.

Having some berries has allowed a trial run of the new berry separator. As with all prototypes there are a number of small design changes to fine tune the machine, but reflecting that last year separation was a manual process – this is a revolution in progress.

A revolution might mean progress, but without a main crop this year we have now to focus on harvest 2019. It has been three years since we planted any new plants, but the next planting needs to reflect which varieties to select as commercially viable for the future. A small field next to the existing orchard will provide room for another 1300 plants.

Our selection needs to be on which plants are responding to regrowth after harvesting. Taste is key. Large berry size would be good for marketing but currently achieving a 1gm berry seems difficult.  With that in mind the focus on establishing a new site will be to improve the soil condition from the start with compost incorporated into the planting soil.  As we are all becoming conscious of water conservation we do not want to irrigate mature plants, but providing a drip line to new plants is worth trying. Improving our foliar feed applications through the growing cycle also becomes possible now we are tooling up with our landini tractor with a sprayer. Like the introduction of the separator, each year that goes by brings us closer to having the full set of tools to produce a good crop of sea buckthorn.