Why do cranberries end up floating in a flooded field?

Hook

Why and how do cranberries end up floating in a flooded field? Those famous red bogs are about to land on a lot of Thanksgiving tables. Here's the trick.

Vines

First, cranberries don't grow underwater. They grow on low vines in sandy beds called bogs, which stay dry most of the year.

Flood

At harvest time, from mid September to early November, many growers flood the bogs with water.

Reel

Then machines called water reels, nicknamed egg beaters, churn through the vines and knock the berries loose.

Float

Here's the secret. Each cranberry has little pockets of air inside, so the loose berries float right to the surface.

Gather

Workers use floating booms to corral the berries into a bright red carpet, then pump or convey them into trucks.

Dry

More than ninety percent are harvested this way and become juice, sauce and dried cranberries. Fresh berries are dry harvested by machines that comb them off the vines. They're even sorted by bounce, because good berries bounce and soft ones don't.

Close

So cranberries float because they're full of air, and growers flood the bogs to scoop them up. ThatsWhyHow.