Cranberries: Fruits Of The Wild

When I began to think about this week’s column I wanted to find a theme that would tie in Thanksgiving and the East End. The Pilgrims didn’t work and neither did turkeys, but there is an East End native plant that certainly does have a strong link to this holiday and can be found growing from Riverhead to Montauk. That plant is Vaccinium macrocarpon, but you probably know it better as the cranberry.You probably also know that wild blueberries abound in the Hamptons, as do the beach plums that end up in many a jelly jar, but cranberries? In fact, cranberries were a large commercial crop in this area from 1880 to 1974, when the last commercial bog in Manorville closed down. But cranberries in the wild can still be found in these parts, and cranberries can also be grown on most of our properties, even without the bog.

The ultimate demise of the local crop was a combination of insect problems, high labor costs and the great cranberry scare of 1959, when it was found that a cancer had developed in mice that were exposed to a weed killer used in the bogs. With this disclosure the bottom virtually fell out of the bog in spite of later revelations that a human would probably die from an overdose of cranberries before any trace of the herbicide’s carcinogen would be found. Just a year before, when I was 9 years old, we had visited the Ocean Spray cranberry store on the Cape in Massachusetts, where you could drink all the cranberry juice you wanted for just a nickel.

Closely related to the blueberry and laurel and able to grow in most soils where you find azaleas and rhododendrons, the cranberry is a compact, viney plant consisting of both uprights and runners. The runners (lateral shoots) form trailing vines that mat over the entire bog. Uprights arise from runners and bear the fruits. Each upright sports five blossoms, but fruit set is extremely poor and only about one in five actually becomes a berry. It almost looks like a goof by Mother Nature. The blossoms are self-fertile, but they bend over and face earthward, so the heavy pollen just falls off into the bog. Bees and other insects helpfully fertilize enough to provide us with about a 20-percent fruit set.

The Native Americans had long used cranberries as both a food and medicine long before the white man set foot at Plymouth Rock, but soon after the newcomers’ arrival they noticed a similarity to the European lingonberry and began to incorporate it into their diet. And while early settlers found the berries to be plentiful, as early as 1670 the Pilgrims set aside land at the tip of Cape Cod for conservation and enacted strict laws regarding the rights of individuals to pick the berries on public lands. By 1773 some towns passed laws forbidding townspeople from picking unripe berries, and in the 1880s laws were passed restricting the harvest to local residents and Indian tribes. While some berries can still be harvested in the wild, most of us depend on the commercially harvested fruits for our supplies of sauce, relish, jellies and juices, with the bulk of the crop coming from Massachusetts, New Jersey and the upper Midwest.

The majority of the crop used to be grown up the road a bit in Cape Cod by the Ocean Spray cooperative, where small and large farmers still pool their annual yields and get paid on the basis of a predetermined rate per pound. It’s been a boom and bust crop with a fascinating history, but recent marketing has kept the market stable, if not growing.

The traditional planting was done in a bog or similar area where there is plenty of water and acidic soil, and arrangements must be made so that the bog can be flooded with this water at any time. This usually means there must be facilities for storing the water at a higher level than the bog, or that there is a stream with ample water of the right kind and it can be pumped to flood the bog. Flooding is necessary for the good growth of the plants, to aid in insect control as well as in assisting in harvesting and protection from winter freezing damage. The soil must be acid, preferably with a pH of 4.5-5.0. To complicate matters a bit more, the flooding technique must be extremely accurate, and therefore quick and easy drainage is also necessary, as the plants cannot stand to be submerged for more than a day or so.

In preparing the soil for planting, the final operation is to apply 4 inches of sand over the entire bog area as a medium in which new cuttings are struck in mounds much the way we plant hills of cucumbers and melons. After planting, the bog is flooded to firm the plantings in and then drained and weeded throughout the summer. The crop will not bear its first fruits until about four years later, when the berries are mechanically harvested when they float to the top of a flooded bog.

The bog is again drained, and then around December 1, when the plants are dormant, flooded again and then not drained until the following May. After harvesting, the berries are collected in boxes and then processed through a machine that blows off the chaff and sorts the good berries (fresh market) from the poorer qualities that are used for juice and sauce. About 50 percent of the crop now goes into juice, with the balance split between fresh market and other uses.

In Riverhead near the county center you can still visit and hike the Cranberry Bog County Nature Preserve, where cranberries were commercially grown by the Woodhull brothers. In 1889 they harvested 10 bushels of berries, and by 1891 there was a harvest of 500 bushels. But just a year later, the brothers’ hard work paid off with a harvest of 21,000 bushels. If you visit you can still see the remnants of a few buildings and the bogs as well as some of the cranberry bushes. In contrast, in Massachusetts there are now 14,000 acres of bogs being worked as opposed to the 176 that the Woodhulls had. The other place where you can see uncultivated cranberries growing in the wild is out in Montauk at Hither Hills State Park.

The Cranberry Bog County Nature Preserve has a mile-long trail that loops around Sweezy Pond. The Little Peconic River, the outlet of Wildwood Lake, runs through the 165-acre park and feeds Sweezy Pond. The pond was formed in the late 1800s to flood a cranberry bog. John Sweezy, who operated a gristmill powered by the Little Peconic River, sold the property to the Woodhull brothers for their venture and then Suffolk County became the largest producer of cranberries in the United States. The preserve is also known for its rare wildflowers and plant communities, but if you go bring your tick repellent.

Can you grow cranberries in your home garden? You sure can, and you can even buy the plants online. There’s a great resource for home gardeners, http://goo.gl/Xdtdha, and it includes all the information you need including some videos. You can buy cranberry plants here—http://goo.gl/fnvCyQ—but I’m sure there are other sources.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Maybe it’s time to add to the tradition by growing your own cranberries? You’ve got the links, and the information is at your fingertips. Keep growing.