How to effectively grow and preserve the harvest of blueberries, garden strawberries and raspberries, experts discussed at a berry conference in the Brest region.
The organizer of the exhibition and conference is the Berkeley farm. Its head, Alexander Berezin, shared his own experience of growing berry crops. In addition, at the meeting, it was possible to get advice from specialists from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Poland.
The following topics aroused the greatest interest among the conference participants: the use of low-volume spraying on berry crops, the cultivation of berry crops in tunnels, the experience of using various refrigeration and freezing modules and irrigation systems. The experience of the Berkeley farm on the use of fog generators for combating return spring frosts turned out to be interesting. An unobvious, but very important nuance is a container for collecting and freezing berries. Do you think any drawer will do? Not really. The “host” of the event, Alexander Berezin, spoke about what to pay attention to.
Colleagues shared their own schemes for processing and feeding berry crops, discussed problematic points, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using various means of mechanization when growing berries and planting material. The participants of the meeting tried out the possibilities of the electric pruner with interest.
It was a rewarding experience to visit the blueberry plantations of the Berkeley farm and inspect the greenhouses. Here it was possible to see the technique in action, to clarify the nuances of the work of specialists “in the field”.
Such meetings are important both for novice farmers and owners of personal subsidiary farms who grow berries, and for professionals. Many points affecting work efficiency are learned only in practice. And although the experience of one farmer cannot be unified and precisely applied in another farm, it is definitely worth listening to how colleagues work. When farmers act not so much as competitors, but as like-minded people, this allows them to develop more efficiently.