When New York Times garden columnist Ann Raver set out to write a folksy piece on home blueberry production, she sought expertise from a UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor 3,000 miles away.
Raver writes enviously about the wild blueberries her New Hampshire sister collects on the shores of crystal-clear lakes and around Maine mountaintop meadows, then intoduces information about growing the plants in Maryland backyards.
Even though blueberries are thought of traditionally as a crop of the North East and Pacific Northwest, she spoke to Mark Gaskell, a UCCE farm advisor in Santa Barbara County, who is helping local growers with varieties that can be grown in California.
“Our early varieties are starting to bear right now,” Gaskell is quoted in the column's sixth paragraph. Southern high-bush blueberry cultivars available to the home grower that do well along the central California coast, like Sharpblue, Gulf Coast, Marimba and Georgia Gem, bear fruit from February through June, Raver paraphrases Gaskell.
