Prospects for blueberry crop look promising this year

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This summer’s wild blueberry or bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) crop is predicted to be good in many places. However, last summer’s heat wave dried up blueberry shrubs completely in some places, and hence the total yield is expected to be only slightly better than average, says Kauko Salo, a senior researcher at the Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA).
      Only a heat wave and drought could hinder the upcoming season’s harvest of wild blueberries. The flowering of blueberry plants has begun in Finnish forests this week even as far north as in Inari in Northern Lapland.
      In Southern Finland the shrubs already have green berries, and when the blueberry season begins in July, a good blueberry place will be easier to find than last summer, which was something of a disaster for anyone wishing to fill their freezers for the autumn and winter.
     
A good harvest is expected to be gathered in many places across Finland, for example in Juva, Muhos, Kolari, Lammi, Mikkeli, Hyrynsalmi, Kuusamo, Punkaharju, and Vironlahti.
      The typical frost danger period is over, Salo believes.
      METLA has a total of about 250 1.0 m x 1.0 m sampling squares on its forest test sites, where the growing of blueberries can be observed.
      On METLA’s test plots, the average number of flowers per square metre is about 164 this year, while in 2006 the number was down as low as 128. Last year was a weaker than average blueberry year all of the country, and in some parts the berries were truly hard to find.
     
The recent hot spell was good for insects, and the number of insects in blueberry forests is reported to be high, which implies that the pollination of blueberry flowers has been successful. It also suggests that those who go and pick them will need some heavy-duty mosquito repellent - blueberry picking and bites tend to go together.
      Lingonberries have also begun to flower in Southern Finland. This year the flowering began one week earlier than last year.
      In a good year, the aggregate harvests of the three most important wild berries in Finland, namely lingonberry, blueberry, and cloudberry, can amount to some 620 million kilos.
     
Only one tenth of the harvest will be collected, with the majority of the yield ending up in the freezers of private persons.
      The value of the picked berries is about EUR 70 million, while the share of Finnish households is some EUR 54 million of that sum.
      Typically, Finns prefer to pick blueberries for their own use - and not for sale. Consequently, there is a large demand for foreign berry pickers in Finnish forests to supply the needs of the foodstuffs and perserves industries. Last year the number of foreign pickers was around 3,000.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish strawberry growers prefer foreign berry pickers (12.6.2007)
  Ukrainian pickers staying to wait for lingonberries to ripen (8.8.2006)

Links:
  The Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA)
  The blueberry or bilberry. The Finnish variety is Vaccinium myrtillus (Wikipedia)

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