Cranberries a Holiday Favorite

Went shopping yesterday and the bags of fresh cranberries are being cleared off  the supermarket shelves just in time of course for the Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas season.

Cranberries are in the family of plants in the subgenus Oxycoccus of the genus Vaccinum. The varieties of cranberries  are native to northern North America, northern Asia, and northern Europe. Some varieties of cranberries, some which are low creeping shrubs (2-8 inches in height), or whereas others are vines, which can reach a length of 7 feet.

Though there are different species and varieties of cranberries, most cranberries have flowers, which are dark pink, the leaves are small and evergreen, and the berries are larger than the leaves of the plant.

Contrary to popular belief, commercially produced cranberries do not grow in permanent watery bogs.

Rather a cranberry bed is constructed by removing the topsoil and replacing the topsoil with a 2-4 inch level of sand. Dikes are built around the beds to hold the water and there is irrigation equipment to provide watering to encourage spring vine growth as well as provide the flooding of the beds to provide autumn frost protection.

During the growing season, cranberry beds are well watered and fertilized. It is when the berries are red and ready for harvesting the cranberry beds are flooded. The ripened cranberries rise to the top of the water where they are corralled to the corner of the bed and then pumped out of the bed to be cleaned and sorted for packaging or processing.

Interesting facts about cranberries:

• Early American settlers named the plant cranberry because the flowers and stem resembled the neck, head, and bill of a crane. In parts of Canada, the same plant is referred to as mossberry
• 95% of harvested cranberries end up in fruit drinks or canned cranberries whereas 5% are sold as fresh cranberries
• Fresh cranberries can be frozen at home, and will keep up to nine months; they can be used directly in recipes without thawing
• Wisconsin is the leading producer of cranberries, with over half of U.S. production with Massachusetts being  the second largest U.S. producer
• White cranberry juice is made from regular cranberries that have been harvested after the fruits are mature, but before they have attained their characteristic dark red color