Cranberry picking trip
Text and photos Kristel Vilbaste
Translation Liis
Cranberry booty.
9,5 litres in two and a half hours was the booty of our family, from the Laeva bog, just at the Sillaotsa parking lot.
The second Sunday in September is nearly always the right time for cranberry picking – the berries are no longer unripe. There are cranberries to pick but look in the wooded bogs, not in the open areas.
Photo Arne Ader
Cranberries
Cranberry; Northern cranberry Harilik jõhvikas Oxycoccus palustris
Where cranberries grow – transition bogs and bog and swamp outskirts - there is open space, peace and a measure of mystical early autumn silence...
Look at the creeping and thin-stemmed dwarf shrub or clump of the cranberry: the Estonian name, jõhvikas, has its origin from the delicate stalk, like a horsehair or ”jõhv”, that joins the berry to the plant stem.
In their first year of growth the stems of the cranberry stand are herbaceous, in the second they lignify and begin to scale. The leaves of cranberries are evergreen, stiff and glossy, less than a centimetre in length.
The berries usually ripen in mid-September and it is worthwhile to pick the wholesome cranberries from then and onwards. Berries picked earlier and left to ripen in storage will have less taste and they are less wholesome.
Berries that have had repeated frosts also taste better as a snack for bog hikers.
In major bookstores Kristel’s cranberry book is still available: an excellent book for enthusiasts.
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