University of Vermont Extension
Department of Plant and Soil Science
Fall
News
Article
CRANBERRIES
FOR THANKSGIVING
Dr. Leonard Perry, Extension
Professor
University of Vermont
Turkey without cranberry sauce? For
most New Englanders that's as unthinkable as Thanksgiving without
turkey! In
fact, even the Pilgrims enjoyed this versatile perennial fruit with
their first
Thanksgiving meal.
The
cranberry was a staple in the diet of Native Americans who called it
the
"bitter berry." They introduced this food to the early settlers and
taught them how to make "pemmican" by pounding the cranberries
together with dried meat and fat. The settlers also made meat sauces
with
cranberries and mixed them with maple sap to make a sweet breakfast
syrup.
The
cranberry is a native American wetland plant that is grown in open bogs
and
marshes from Newfoundland to western Ontario and as far south as
Virginia and
Arkansas. Although stems (actually they
are vines) are rather sensitive to cold, they’ll withstand such
submersion
well. The vine-like plant grows from six
inches to two feet long and has small, evergreen leaves and pinkish
flowers.
The berries are harvested in October, just in time for Thanksgiving.
Massachusetts
is the leading producer (with about half of the total U.S. crop),
followed by
Wisconsin and New Jersey. In Canada,
there is limited production in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and
British
Columbia. Production of cranberries
requires a large amount of water--the equivalent of about 200 inches of
rainfall a year for irrigation, frost protection, harvest, pest
control, and
winter protection. Soil pH needs to be between 4.0 and 5.0 because
cranberries require low pH for
adequate nutrient intake. In Massachusetts, the Cape Cod area is
especially
suited for commercial cranberry production.
About
90 percent of the cranberries are wet harvested. Bogs are flooded just
prior to
harvest, then a
floating harvester moves through the bog to separate the berries from
the vine.
The hollow fruit rises to the surface where it is collected and
corralled in a
section of the bog. The fruit is moved
from the bog to the waiting trucks by elevator, then taken away for
processing.
Fruit that is harvested by this method is processed into juice, sauce,
and
other cranberry products. The rest of the crop is dry harvested with a
picking
machine, which resembles a large lawn mower. Although this method is
less
efficient, growers receive a higher price for dry harvested fruit.
These
cranberries usually are packaged and sold as fresh whole berries in
grocery
stores.
Berries
can be stored in their original container in the refrigerator for up to
a week,
or washed and frozen in a freezer container for later use. They do not
need to
be thawed before using them in a recipe. In addition to the traditional
jelly
or sauce, cranberries can be used for pies, muffins, quick breads,
puddings, and
sherbets. Cranberry juice, both regular and sugar-free, has become a
popular
drink in recent years, especially in combination with other juices.
If
you want to try growing some at home, you’ll need a cool moist
soil with plenty
of organic matter such as peat moss.
Grown in full sun, cranberries will make an attractive and low
maintenance evergreen groundcover under a foot high and 2 to 3 feet
wide.
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Perry's Perennial
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