Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

Gary Hailig

Mike Messer

01 The Why of Gardening

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

I don't know about you, but there's some things in your life that you just have a passion for that sometimes you just can't explain.

As Heidi mentioned, you know, Sabbath afternoon, walking out in the garden with your Sabbath shoes on.

I just like to go out there and watch, see the produce that has been, that God has ripened and made it ready.

It's a very spiritual endeavor for me, because you just see God's creation.

And so, you know, we ask the question, why garden?

And this isn't going to be a tell you this is how you do it, you should be doing it or else.

This is just talking about gardening, the benefits of it, and maybe giving some pointers.

And I also perhaps want to hear from you in a couple of the spots.

But she already asked my question, how many garden?

And so we see that most of you are and in fact some of you may be even more qualified than I am to come up here and give this presentation.

But Professor Heilig, he's going to be here tomorrow and the rest of the week.

He worked at MSU in the horticultural department.

And his wife's husband was our pastor at Ithaca and so it's happy to see them.

But anyway there are lots to discuss here so we'll just go ahead and get going.

Where do we first hear of the word garden?

In Genesis 2, verse 8, the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Now do you think if God spent all his effort in creating that he would just put man in an environment that would be mediocre, that would be okay for him?

Or do you think he would put him someplace that he would flourish?

I'm stealing some quotes out of here, which Carrie House took out of various Spirit of Prophecy books.

This particular 1 is Patriarchs and Prophets, page 50.

To the dwellers in Eden was committed to the care of the garden, to dress and to keep it.

Their occupation was not wearisome, like we often think about gardening today, but pleasant and invigorating.

God appointed labor as a blessing to man.

To strengthen his body, to develop his faculties.

In mental and physical activity, Adam found 1 of the highest pleasures of his holy existence.

I can't wait to see what the garden is going to look like in heaven.

But unfortunately, we all know the story, man fell.

And so, then to Adam he said, "'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife "'and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you, "'saying, you shall not eat of it, "'cursed is the ground for your sake.

"'In toil you shall eat of it, all the days of your life.

"'Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, "'and you shall eat the herb of the field.

"'In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.

And you know, for a long time I looked at this passage and I thought, well, God's punishing man because he sinned.

It says, cursed is the ground for your sake.

And when you think of it that way, it has a whole new meaning.

It said, in the toil, this is after the fall, in the life of toil and care, which was henceforth to be man's lot, was appointed in love.

It was a discipline rendered needful by his sin, to place a check upon the indulgence of appetite and passion, to develop habits of self-control.

It was part of God's great plan for man's recovery from the ruin and degradation of sin.

It was very helpful for me to understand this whole, you know, God is a God of vengeance and while we have to work, it was for our own benefit.

So let's look at the benefits of gardening.

Most of us in here probably have heard of the New START acronym.

It stands for Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sunshine, Temperance, Fresh Air, Rest, and Trust in God.

And how many in here of these groupings can be met in gardening?

I mean in various ways, especially if you've been working in the garden all day, that rest is going to be sweet because you've got plenty of sunshine.

It's going to produce the melatonin that your body produces as a result.

So, I'm not going to go through every 1 of these.

You've already heard most of it, but I just want to hit on some basic things that pertain to gardening specifically.

So let's talk about the nutrition aspect of it.

If you notice on the bottom, it's data is based on average losses and key vitamins only.

So from when it's harvested till it gets to your plate, generally it takes about 11 to 15 days.

And during that 11 to 15 days you will lose about 45% of some of your nutrients.

And so this is a really good case for growing your own food because my granddaughter was here this week and Friday we went out and I had her pick strawberries right from the patch into her mouth and it does not get fresher than in your own garden.

Broccoli, usually between 6 and 16 days it goes from the field to your plate.

So you've already started the decaying process.

Carrots, 9 to 10 days, and of course in the winter we lose a lot more.

And Again this is an exhaustive list so we could talk more about this.

But the 1 thing about this list is that what it doesn't take into account is for if you want to freeze it or prepare it.

1 of the best ways is freezing because you can take it fresh out of your garden, throw it in the freezer, and you've preserved a lot of those nutrients.

Canning, while it preserves good wholesome food, it don't keep as much of the nutrients as freezing does.

Now, and I'm not an expert on freeze-drying either.

My sister got a freeze dryer and she dried some things for me and I understand you keep a lot of the nutrients that way too but I just haven't had much experience with that.

But we're talking about gardening, aren't we?

So 1 case to be made for growing your own food is nutritional quality.

I don't have the stats on that, but I do think that is another good way of doing it.

And Professor Halig, you're welcome to jump in any time and correct me.

02 Growing Strawberries

So today we're going to be talking about growing strawberries.

I have to get this done in an hour, so I'm going to be moving along.

What I will do is, this will be recorded audio tape, but if somebody would like copies of the PowerPoint, just bring in a jump drive and we'll put it on there for you.

But first, I'm going to put a disclaimer up here because I am using copyrighted material which I can use legally.

I'm not making any money doing this, but I want to let people know that some of these pictures come from online and some, 1 or 2, are even generated by MidJourney.

So some of these were talked about yesterday.

There were some various points that I wanted to bring up.

First of all, Ellen White talks about we need to be self-sufficient for the days that are coming and there's going to be a time where we won't be able to go to the grocery store and buy something and hopefully you'll be able to grow some food.

Also, they mentioned yesterday that when you pick something in your garden and take it to the house, you're at the peak of its nutrition.

And when you buy something that's been shipped from as far away as Israel or Chile or some of these different places, nutrient levels go down.

And of course, they mentioned exercise yesterday.

Getting out in the garden at 70 years old is great while you're out there.

And another thing that wasn't mentioned, it is important that we teach the next generation how to grow their own food and where food comes from because I've done presentations for children that were in preschool all the way up to folks that were falling asleep in nursing homes as I was speaking to them and The children did not realize that potatoes grew underground.

And many other things, even my own daughter, Laura, said, you mean, I don't remember what the particular plant was, she said, you mean this particular plant, and I'll use potato, you mean potato chips or potatoes?

And they just don't make the connection many times.

But gardening can be used for evangelism and I'm an elder in our church and when I would go out visiting, if I had something that was ripe like strawberries or raspberries or whatever, I'd pick some and take them with me.

And I'm telling you, something grown in your garden, and you present it to somebody, especially if it's sweet, they really enjoy that.

And I have a Bible study I'm doing right now, a guy named Roger, and hopefully I'll be able to give him some blueberries or some of the other things that we're growing right now.

Of course, I wanted to find out, what did the Bible have to say about fruits and vegetables?

And so I picked out a few of them, and this was from Micah 7.1, from the New King James Version, and it was talking about the sorrow for Israel's sins but they were relating it to fruit and it says, Woe is me, this is verse 7, for I am like those who gather summer fruit, like those who glean vintage grapes.

There's more information about grapes in the Bible than any other fruit.

There is no cluster to eat of the first fruit which my soul desires.

Ellen White, as you well know, has written many things about agriculture, they mentioned that.

When I saw this, I had thought about writing something like this, and I was maybe a little down a little bit when I found out somebody already did it, but I was also very happy that I wouldn't have to do it.

And so we bought 1 of these yesterday and by the end of the week I'll have it read.

Anyway, I'm sure this is in the book somewhere, but this is from Councils on Diet and Foods.

Wherever fruits can be grown in abundance, a liberal supply should be prepared for winter.

My wife and I like to can and freeze, and we have the ability to dry.

And small fruits such as currants, gooseberries, strawberries, and I hadn't tasted a currant until about 5 years ago.

And there's a company, it's a French company that does a black currant preserve that I couldn't believe how good it was.

And so when you make your own stuff, it's really good.

And of course strawberries were mentioned, raspberries were mentioned, blackberries can be grown to advantage in many places where they are but little used and their cultivation is neglected.

Most of the time you're more likely to see a child eating a bag of Doritos than you are seeing them munch on a bowl of raspberries.

Oh man, I wish this wouldn't be this big.

I check all of these things beforehand, but the devil is always messing things up.

But anyway, this is a video that I did not too long ago.

It's called Sweetening the World, the Birth of Modern Strawberries.

So if you want to know where strawberries came from, you can go to my YouTube channel and watch this.

By the way, this is a YouTube generated picture from mid-journey.

That's an amazing story all by itself, what you can do.

Now, if you can't take a picture, if you can describe it, AI can make it for you.

So these are the different things that we're going to be talking about today.

Not in great detail, but I think enough detail that'll make you happy.

In terms of growing difficulty, strawberries are 1 of the easier fruits to grow.

Your return on investment is pretty quick because if you're growing, if you're growing summer, June, no it's the the smaller ones, the smallest 1.

If you're growing the June bearing strawberries, you don't get your return on investment to the following year.

If you're growing everbears or day neutrals, which we'll talk about in a minute, you can get return on investment the same year that you plant them.

You do want to avoid following certain types of plants.

Anything in the potato family is susceptible to the same soil-borne diseases like verticillium that strawberries will be susceptible to also.

Although you can get cultivars that are more resistant to verticillium, you should avoid planting in areas where verticillium is around.

And even if you have maple trees that have been dying, and you cut the wood, and look at the inner wood, and you see streaks of kind of bluish-gray streaks, that's verticillium, and that's not the kind of soil that you want to put strawberries in.

You want to start with healthy planting stock.

You don't want to dig up plants from somebody else's house because you can bring viruses in your garden.

They're not that expensive, although prices are going up.

Because especially if you go to some of the good nursery houses, the best stuff goes out first, and I'll show you where I order mine from, and it's a really good place.

They sell both to homeowners and commercial growers, and they have top quality stuff.

I've never been disappointed ordering from them.

So start with healthy stock, it's certified virus free when you buy it from a nursery.

And at the very latest I try to order in August if you could, because if you want to try newer cultivars that are just being released, for instance, you need to get those orders in early, otherwise you might not get them.

Oh, for anybody that came in late, if you want any of these presentations, just bring in a memory stick or a jump drive or whatever you call it and I'll copy it for you.

Well, that depends on how much you plan on eating.

And I'll talk about the yield a little bit later, but you can calculate how much you'd like to eat by serving, and then you can decide on what you want.

But most people don't need more than a 50-foot row, especially if you're only fresh eating and you're going to share.

We have what's called June bears, we have Everbears and Day Neutrals.

The first 2 are affected by the day length, and it's more the length of the night than the day, but long days, short nights will encourage flower bud initiation, and day neutrals are not affected so much by the day length, and they produce a crop about every 6 weeks.

The everbears will produce multiple crops, but they don't crop as often as the day neutrals.

And then the June bears, they will produce their flowers late summer and then they'll have a fruit the following season and then they won't have another crop until the following year.

Although under certain strange weather conditions, you will sometimes see them flower in the fall and produce another crop.

But it's usually when they've been stressed.

These are some of the early season cultivars and strawberry season runs from about the second week of June and they're usually finished up by the fourth of July.

And within that group we have the early and the mid-season and the late season.

So early would be that second week of June, the late season would be getting toward more July.

And these are just some of the cultivars.

Early glow is known for its really nice strawberry flavor.

The negative thing if you were a commercial grower is the fact that they get smaller very quickly after they get the first berries.

03 Growing Blueberries

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you again for a beautiful, almost summer day.

And we thank you for blueberries and strawberries and grapes and raspberries.

And we pray that as we learn how to grow them today, that we'll enjoy the fruitful harvest after all of the hard work that we're going to put in.

And as we do this work, may we always glorify you and give thanks for the blessings that you've given us.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, just as a reminder, if you want any of the PowerPoints, just drop off your little memory stick or jump drive or whatever you call it.

I'll do these after the class is over, and if you have to leave, I'll just do it at home and bring it back.

If you don't want the whole presentation but you want a particular chart or something like that, write me a note and then I'll do it tonight.

Okay, so today we're talking about blueberries, tomorrow grapes, and then the day after that brambles, which is raspberries and blackberries.

And my text today comes from Deuteronomy 33 13 and it's this is when Jacob was blessing all of his sons and of Joseph he said, blessed of the Lord is his hand with the precious things of heaven with the dew and the deep lying beneath with the precious fruits of the Sun with the precious produce of the month and Blessings are always associated with things that grow.

The more I learn how things grow, the more I'm fascinated by them.

And even at 70 years old and after all the experience I have, I'm always learning something new.

And Ellen White had this vision, and in that vision she said, and this is only a portion of it, soon the wagon halted and the party scattered in every direction to look for fruit.

All around their wagon were both high and low bushes bearing large, beautiful wartleberries.

Here's 1 of the things that I learned that I didn't know before.

A wartleberry is actually a European species of blueberry.

But the company were all looking far, too far away to see them.

I began to gather the fruit nearby, but very carefully for the fear of picking the green berries, because blueberries don't ripen all together at 1 time, which were so mingled with the ripe fruit that I could only pick 1 or 2 berries from the cluster, which automatically told me she was picking really early in the season.

So I never knew that existed until I started researching this.

So these are some of the different topics we're going to be talking about.

I'm going to be rolling along since we didn't start on time.

It's considered a minor fruit because not a lot of people grow blueberries because of the soil conditions that they require.

Although they don't have nearly as many pests as say apples do.

And even compared to strawberries, they have fewer pests.

And you can grow decent raspberries without a lot of spraying, but the spraying you do has to be targeted for the big ones that I'll talk about a little bit later.

As I mentioned, they have special requirements in terms of soils, special requirements in terms of fertilizers that you should and shouldn't use on them and we'll talk about those.

It is a slow-growing shrub, beautiful bell-shaped flowers and if you've ever seen the fall color of a euonymus, which is a bright fiery red in the fall, that's what blueberries look like in the fall.

So they add something to your landscape and they can last a lot of years.

So for instance strawberries, they peter out after about 5 or 6 years, depending on your care, you can have blueberries 20, 30 years later.

So that's assuming you take care of them.

And they produce new shoots from the base every year.

They don't need to be pruned until they're about 4 years old.

But this is the fruit that you're going to wait the longest for.

I never tasted a blueberry until I was an adult.

But what I really like is the dried blueberries.

And you get the real essence of what blueberry flavor is, and you can't describe what it's like.

I won't say any more, but yeah, and I guess orange blossom honey is really good too.

If you want to talk about honey, my wife is the honey person in the family.

And it does have good medicinal purposes and that type of thing, but I know how it's made.

But anyway, the site selection for blue ray, and let me tell you, bees are clean animals and they're not running around in trash like flies do.

I could make you gag if I told you what flies did, but I still don't like honey.

But anyway, so they they like to have a acidic pH lower than most plants.

Most plants do well when your mid-6 is up to just below 7, which is neutral on the pH scale.

And pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of your soil.

And you'll notice here it's best between 4 or 5.

Now in Michigan we would suggest something like 4, 2 to 5, 2.

If you read other references it'll be close but they may not necessarily be the exact numbers.

You will find blueberries growing on the edge of bogs.

And they like a relatively high water table, which not very many plants do.

Like grapes do not like high water tables.

And so the other interesting thing about them is they don't have root hairs, so they don't manage water take up very effectively and we'll talk about that a little bit later.

Series

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

03 Growing Blueberries

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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