Wild blueberries

Kupcake · Post by **Kupcake** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:06 am

Found some wild blueberries yesterday at Hakaniemi, but they are Estonian. Some shopkeepers are telling me that this year is particularly bad for wild blueberries in Finland and that i may not be able to buy any Finnish ones at all, others say that they will be in soon and that it's too early for them yet.

Does anybody knwo what's going on?

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Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:12 am

There are none in our neck of the woods (Pojha) and none around our home in Espoo. Everyone I have spoken to has the same problem.

A friend's mum said she had seen some in eastern Finland around Lappeenranta and I guess there could be some further north, but then it may be too early for those.

OTOH.... tons of lingonberries starting to ripen and masses and masses of raspberries (wild and cultivated).

Kupcake · Post by **Kupcake** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:18 am

Thanks for that Penelope. Tomorrow i'm going to get a couple of boxes of the Estonian ones - i bought some yesterday and they taste fine. I bag them up and freeze them for the winter for smoothies, bircher meusli, cakes, etc.

I'm also loving the raspberries, but they are more expensive. And i don't think the raspberries or lingonberries offer the same nutritional benefits of the wild blueberry. I'd prefer to buy Finnish, but Estonian will do.

onkko · Post by **onkko** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 11:34 am

Thats because few berrypickers crashed their car in kemijärvi, cant find link now tho

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 12:18 pm

Kupcake wrote:Thanks for that Penelope. Tomorrow i'm going to get a couple of boxes of the Estonian ones - i bought some yesterday and they taste fine. I bag them up and freeze them for the winter for smoothies, bircher meusli, cakes, etc.

I'm also loving the raspberries, but they are more expensive. And i don't think the raspberries or lingonberries offer the same nutritional benefits of the wild blueberry. I'd prefer to buy Finnish, but Estonian will do.

IIRC rspberries are a good source of calcium and I'm sure lingonberries have a ton of Vitamin C. If you want to pick wild raspberries (for free) go to areas of forest where the trees have already been felled in the past couple of years. They grow really quickly in cleared forest and on the edge of coniferous forests. The tyyrni berries are also extremely healthy but they are not ripe until October.

I love blueberries in porridge in winter. I throw in a handful. You can also buy them frozen from the supermarkets all year round. Maybe not as good as the wild ones though.

CH · Post by CH » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:29 pm

We were out yesteday walking in the forest, my daughter and I, and there were bluberries but sparsely, mostly in the more wetter areas of the forest. My guess is that the beginning of the summer was too dry. Now it seems to be too dry for mushrooms too, only found one to take home (was hoping to find lots of chanterells). Well, daughter came home with blue fingers and mouth, so the forest walk was a success.

onkko · Post by **onkko** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:31 pm

CH wrote:We were out yesteday walking in the forest, my daughter and I, and there were bluberries but sparsely, mostly in the more wetter areas of the forest. My guess is that the beginning of the summer was too dry. Now it seems to be too dry for mushrooms too, only found one to take home (was hoping to find lots of chanterells). Well, daughter came home with blue fingers and mouth, so the forest walk was a success.

Thats main thing

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 2:33 pm

I haven't found any chanterelles yet either even though I was in the forest every day last week and it rained (a deluge) on Tuesday (25mm).

Have spotted "tourists" on my patch though, so am significantly concerned

hopefully they were just looking for blueberries and won't come back.

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:09 pm

don't you use a couple of shrunk tourist heads to mark your turf? I've found sacrificing a small vole at the cupstone also helps unless the neighbor has been there in the morning with a roadkill... once tried cheating with moose droppings and was crawling with mooseflies...

Cloudberry · Post by **Cloudberry** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:34 pm

OMG no blueberries

Actually, aren't they meant to be around from about next week onwards?

Kupcake · Post by **Kupcake** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 6:54 pm

LisaV wrote:Actually, aren't they meant to be around from about next week onwards?

That was part of the original question ...

EP · Post by EP » Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:36 pm

A friend's mum said she had seen some in eastern Finland around Lappeenranta

No, I just came back from there. Normally the cottage yard would be one big blueberry field, now there was one berry here, another a meter apart. And really small ones, nothing like normally. I didn´t even bother to pick for a single pie.

And they are not coming next week either. Something happened to the blueberry flowers, it was either too dry or too cold, something like that.

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:20 am

It has been a bad year for all berries i reckon, even the wild raspberries haven't been that good.
Seems like they went too long without proper sunshine and the berries didn't ripen fast enough.
I usually enjoy going looking for them but so far the effort/reward ratio has been lousy.

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:28 am

I got a wicked amount of wild strawberries (as I let my garden "grow") but haven't really gone to the forest... need to get my khakis out (moose ticks avoid light color) and go see if its any good in my bog

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:31 am

Hui, good metsämansikkat are even better than lollies, they are so so tasty!
Although i have yet to eat many this year, they just don't grow in our neck of the woods.

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