GOOD FINDS
| BY SUE RALSTON |
PHOTOS: KAYLA NICHOL
L A S S E N C A N YO N N U R S E RY AS AUTUMN APPROACHES AND THE DAYS GET SHORTER, Redding’s weather finally begins to cool down. Some home gardeners’ thoughts turn toward planting cool weather crops such as lettuce, spinach or broccoli. But how many gardeners know they can still plant strawberries as summer comes to an end? Lassen Canyon Nurseries, rooted in the North State since the 1950s, has been supplying home gardeners and commercial growers with strawberry plants since before most readers were born. They’re a North State institution, with operations in Shasta and Siskiyou counties, growing not only strawberries but also several varieties of raspberries and blackberries. “Most people think of strawberries as something that pops up around spring and stops producing by June. But you can plant them as late as September and get fruit in about a month,” says Ellen Brammer, yard manager at Wyntour Gardens, a local nursery supplied by Lassen Canyon. And if you choose the right variety, they’ll produce the following year. “Once the weather starts cooling off, if the winter isn’t freezing cold, I’ll go out and find a couple of berries on my plants through the winter,” says Brammer. They’re a perennial plant and they don’t need frost protection in this area. For late summer and early fall planting, seek out everbearing or “day neutral” varieties such as Albion, Seascape, San Andreas or Sweet Ann. They’ll blossom and set fruit even when the days begin to shorten, until a hard frost puts them into dormancy. Even then, they’ll survive the winter to begin bearing fruit again when warm weather returns. Lassen Canyon’s strawberries are generally available at Wyntour all year. “We get them in bare root form in February, sell about half to the public that way and hold back some of the bare root ones in containers for later sale,” Brammer says. Sweet Ann is a variety developed in Lassen Canyon’s own breeding program and patented in the last few years. It’s favored by organic farmers because of its resistance to disease and its sweetness and high productivity. Brammer favors the Sweet Ann variety herself. “It gives a nice big fruit and tastes like a strawberry should.” Lassen Canyon, a family business co-owned by Kenny Elwood, Jr. and Liz Elwood-Ponce, has earned the distinction as the very first tenant at Redding’s long-vacant Stillwater Business Park. A groundbreaking is planned for later this year and the business will build its 20,000-square-foot corporate office and four or five4 continued on page 56 SEPTEMBER 2016 ENJOY | 55