Press Herald speaks with Armstrong for Maine Gardener column
Charles Armstrong, a cranberry specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, spoke with the Portland Press Herald for the article, “You don’t need a bog to grow your own cranberries,” the latest column in the Maine Gardener series. Cranberries are a native evergreen ground cover that thrive next to lakes and streams, according to the article, and are flooded for easier harvesting. Armstrong said after growing cranberries for a few years, farmers will have to deal with the cranberry fruit worm. “It’s pretty much inevitable that it will show up, because it does exist as a native insect that has been here since cranberries have,” he said, adding organic cranberry growers will lose about half the crop in a bad year — which occurs about once a decade — to the worm.