Checked Brix on North Star sour cherries two Sundays back: 17 1/2. Checked again July 7, Friday: 21. Stripped the tree and got 1 3/4 gallons. This is its first real crop, as last year it was so little it offered almost a pint. Surprise heat after the coldest wettest spring ever (in about 125 years of records) brought the fruit to ripeness sooner than expected.
We then picked Bing and Rainier cherries on Sunday, the 9th, at a local orchard. Quite late for them.
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Looks good, what kind of raspberries do you have? Looks like you have some black rasps?
I was at my friendās place and ate so many. These are not so sweet but very intense flavor. Can not stop eating these.
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North east of San Diego. I wish they were bigger, theyāre delicious! I donāt have particularly large hands, Iāll take another picture for better scale 
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raspberry Ann is my favoriteļ¼hint of apricot. The black raspberry is self grow unknown variety, has stronger flavor. the red is mammoth
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I ate Anne, Caroline, and Double Gold raspberries today. They were all good but I prefer double gold so far. These are young berries so their true taste has likely not come out yet. Anne is very large and Caroline is very small. At least on my bushes.
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Congrats on already getting some berries from your new plants. Plus, theyāre all fall bearers, so youāll be getting more as the season moves on.
Iām afraid four of the five new rasps I planted arenāt going to make it, Theyāve been in the ground about 6 weeks, and those four donāt seem to be sprouting. Just my Eden red rasp and the Anne I got from Loweās have woken up, and theyāre only maybe a foot tall at the most.
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Mad jelly. I would love to have some homegrown peaches
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what variety of gooseberry?
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these are suppose to be pixwell and poorman, however I doubt the labels were correct. I bought the pixwell at local nursary later in season.shoppers could have misplaced the label. Pixwell should be thornless, but mine has thorn. Pixwell should be blush color when ripe, mine is deep purple. Compare to poorman, poorman has larger fruits, deep purple, crunchy texture , a little tart, my pixwell fruits is a bit smaller, soft texture, sweet, no trace of tart.
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My daughter and I each had a handful of almost fully ripe Columbia Star blackberries. This weekend I think theyāll be ripe. I havenāt yet seen any Spotted Wing Drosophila, and these seem to ripen pretty uniformly, purportly suited to machine harvest.
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The best way to deal with SWD is to eat them before they get soft ā¦the softest berries almost always had SWD in them (black raspberries)ā¦oh and donāt think about eating squirming maggots. Iām sure i ate a few.
MSU has a lot on themā¦
The males are easy to identifyā¦the females are more difficult.
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Those berries are perfect. Hope you have enough for a pie.
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Beautiful fruitā¦!! My CS occur more in clusters. The center one ripens first and a couple of days later the 4-5 outer ones ripened
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But the point of growing my own blackberries is so I can harvest superior berries, including picking them at their peak of goodness. They do not get better after picking.
We had a guy from Oregon State University out to speak at one of the Home Orchard Society events, and he suggested August 1st as the nominal guideline harvest date by which one could reasonably expect to avoid Spotted Wing Drosophila problems in our area.
I kept that in mind choosing berries. Thatās one of the factors that helped me pick Cascade Delight red raspberries instead of primocane varieties.
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This is a young planting. There is surely enough for one pie, but weād probably rather eat them fresh. Maybe Iāll heat a few with sugar to get an idea of what theyāll be like processed.
We have an abundance of Himalayan blackberries on our property. Maybe Iāll make a pie with those this year to get it out of my system. I also bought a strainer for the food mill attachment to our food processor. Maybe Iāll try to process the seeds out of the Himalayans.
The seed percentage in these Columbia Star seems the lowest Iāve experienced. Among its many great attributes, thatās one I hadnāt anticipated.
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Really nice blackberries! Wish mine looked that good!
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I live in berry habitat. It doesnāt take a green thumb to grow good berries here.
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Still very impressive, even though you donāt say so yourself.
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