RAIN GUTTERS, GROW BAGS
Grow bags and rain gutters can help keep the berries coming in impossible climates
Tips and tricks for growing berries in Alberta
What if farmers in other regions stop shipping to Alberta the fruit we love this summer? No need to panic. You can grow your own fruit in bags or rain gutters easy as pie.
Dean Kreutzer farms in Lumsden Sask., a place he describes as one of the coldest in Canada. His farm is prone to chinooks and cold nights just like Calgary, but he grows blackberries, raspberries and strawberries until at least Thanksgiving.
Is he lying to me or is he just smarter? I am going with the second option. Kreutzer was a computer programmer until he was 34. That’s almost 20 years ago and he has been farming tender fruit full time ever since.
Khaleed Majouji trained in the hotel business but had an early mid-life crisis at 30. That’s when he tried to grow strawberries in over-the-door shoe organizers. He didn’t succeed, but it gave him an idea he is still using six years later in Montreal.
Both farmers are part of a new movement in Canada to grow fruit where you think you can’t. For Majouji, it started with broccoli in the backyard. After he seeded it, he never saw it again because he discovered he couldn’t tell the difference between broccoli and dandelions. So, he decided he needed a system for growing plants out of the soil where he could find them.
For Kreutzer, bending his more than six-foot tall body over to pick berries off the ground was a non-starter. So, he developed a system to grow berries using raised beds with grow bags in flood trays.
Majouji grows strawberries in rain gutters. He fills each 10-foot long gutter with a soilless mix and 20-day neutral strawberry plants. He fertilizes with Actisol, a composted certified organic chicken manure. A drip-tape watering system adds water as needed — about once a week in early summer and more often later. He starts with small starter plants and picks off all the flowers until early June so the plants can grow at least 15 centimetres wide before flowering. He also picks off all the little suckers the plants send out because he wants all the energy to go into leaves, flowers and fruits.
Kreutzer’s plastic-lined flood trays are a metre off the ground and he adds a float-valve system to easily water the fabric bags. He also plants new berries in soilless mix but, unlike Majouji, he keeps his plants alive for many years so he only plants in the first year. He uses three plants per five-gallon (19-litre) grow bag. In early May, Kreutzer moves the planted grow bags outdoors and covers the bags with floating row cover, such as Agribon-19, when frost threatens.
By July, both farmers are picking and eating berries from their unconventional farms. Majouji lets his plants die in November but replants into the same soil the following spring. Kreutzer brings his grow bags and plants into an unheated farm shop where he keeps them alive, out of the wind and extreme cold of winter.
Kreutzer grows day-neutral strawberries, blackberries and raspberries in shallow bags because these plants only need a shallow root system to thrive. Primocane blackberries and raspberries produce luscious inch-long (2 cm) fruits on new stems every year until at least Thanksgiving. He encourages gardeners to group their fabric bags on the ground, pile leaves on them and add a layer of floating row cover over berry bags left outdoors over winter. But because he grows thousands of grow-bags he finds it easier to store his berries in his unheated shop rather than cover them manually outside.
Kreutzer’s float-valve irrigation system is like the float valve in your toilet. Water pours into the flood trays until the float detects a fixed water level. Once at the desired level, the float valve shuts the water off. Because the fruits are growing in breathable fabric bags, plants thrive even though they are sitting in shallow water.
All the berries at Kreutzer’s farm are fertilized with prairie-grown alfalfa pellets so the plants have a continuous supply of minerals and micronutrients. These pellets are available across Canada and sold at feed stores such as UFA co-op in Calgary.
If you want large local berries without worrying about a faltering supply chain, grow your own this summer. Install rain gutters on a sunny fence or build flood trays where you have at least four hours of sun a day.
Grow-bag and rain-gutter gardening is an exciting alternative for fruit-starved gardeners in Calgary. I have tried both systems and can’t decide which I like better. Maybe I just have an insatiable appetite for sweet fruit.
Donna Balzer is a horticulturist, author and speaker. To hear her latest podcasts with Kreutzer and Majouji, connect at donnabalzer. com.