2021 Buds, Flowers and Fruit!

That’s one fancy name for a plum :grinning:

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Hopefully it tastes as good as it sounds once properly ripened :rofl:

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The Smile of Spring.

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Hunted wild blackberries this morn… got a little more than a gallon in a couple hours.

Added some early mcintosh apple to the mix to get 6 pints of jam. Gorgeous color.

TNHunter

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I have those wild blackberries too, but mainly it’s the wild wineberries that thrive and produce well here.

I posted this in another thread

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@sockworth – nice looking berry… dont have those down here in the south east.

Wild berries on my 30 acres… include blackberries, dewberry, deerberry, elderberry… then muscadine and wild grape… and I harvest some slicebush berry each year too.

Have some ginseng berry too … you can eat them but they taste like sope… better off planting those.

TNHunter

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Jewel black and Heritage red raspberries (floricane crop) ripened after the heavy rains. My son gobbled these down in about 3 seconds. :laughing:

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@sarochka – nice berries. I need more black raspberries. I have two ohio treasure blacks that I started this spring… everbearing… should get a fall crop on those.

My heritage reds started ripening may 26 here… zone 7a TN… they produced nicely for 3 weeks or so… then slowed down - done now. My fall golds are almost done too… and my loganberry.

Blackberries are producing nicely now.

Last fall we got heritage and fall gold berries from first week in Sept until Dec 3. Very nice.

TNHunter

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Heh… You just need to drive a bit further to your east :slight_smile: “Wild Red Raspberry” as many call them, technically invasive Wineberry, are everywhere… I’ve cut/killed a ton of them… But I do allow some to remain and try to keep them in check. Because as @sockworth said, they taste great. One of the more “intense” tastes of any berry I’ve tried…

Them and wild blackberry will just about take over if you let them, I’ve worked to eradicate a ton of those as well. We also have plenty of wild black raspberry and dewberry which I promote and also try to keep in check. If you have one black raspberry around here you pretty soon have a thousand.

Never heard of eating Ginseng berries… I stick 'em in the ground and cut off the tops when they get golden colored to keep the thieves from digging them up.

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Those Jewel berries are huge compared to mine. Mine are less than half of that. I guess they are more suited to wet areas and they don’t like our heat, unless I give plenty of water. That’s only a hypothetical as I don’t want to use too much water on one berry plant. Heritage size is similar to mine

Unknown raspberries. Going to freeze 3 cups to make raspberry ice cream for my daughter’s birthday.

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@wdingus — looked up wineberry on tnipc.com — it is listed as invasive and established in TN. Threat to native plants… spreads by seed (distributed by birds) and vegetatively.

None around here… southern middle TN…
I have looked around pretty good in the woods and fields near my daughters home in Cookeville TN tooooo and have not seen any there. She has lots of BlackBerry but no wineberry.

There is a lot of TN to the east of Cookeville… Bristol TN … I have been there a couple times work related but did not get check out the local wild berries

I bought and planted an autumn olive a couple years ago… it was growing nicely… then heard from a online friend in the north east how invasive it was in his state. He said if you harvested timber on your land… in a few years you would have a huge autumn olive thicket and your native timber could not compete with it.

I checked tnipc and autumn olive was listed as invasive and established… spreads easily by birds distributing seed. I think those are mostly established in the eastern part of the state too.

I pulled mine up and trashed it. Have some nice raspberries growing there now.

On ginseng… once the plant gets into July… the bud for next years top is fully formed… by mid Sept in most parts of the State the berries are red ripe and can be planted. Some ripen earlier… I have a few that ripen berries late july.

You could top your plants late July and they would be fine the next year… would be best to top them right after the berries ripen and you plant them (normally Sept). Most ginseng thieves will hunt out of season too so you never know when they might take them.

I have a little experience with sang.

TNHunter

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Yeah they’re quite established around here and can certainly be pretty invasive. If I were to clear an area of forest, there would probably be a thousand wineberry and wild blackberry growing there immediately. We’re fairly close to Bristol.

At least with wineberry there is a redeeming characteristic, the taste. They are fantastic… There may be some good tasting tame/hybrid red raspberries, I’ve just never met one. Not one that’s 1/10th as good as wineberry at least…

The multi-generation family farm in southwest Virginia where my wife grew up has acres of pasture for cattle. It is a constant battle against the autumn olive and “red cedar”, very much invasive.

I was probably around 5 the first time I went “sang hunting” with my father/grandfather. There is no “season” for any hunting on my property, the thieves have no respect for that fact though… And yeah, I’m pretty familiar with it as well :wink:

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The ginseng the leaf itself and arrangement resembles that of Virginia creeper. The arrangement of red berries on a singular stem is very striking.

What do you do with the berries? I might check around wooded areas of my property to see if I can spot any.

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2oz of Ginseng seeds (~900) looks to be going for about $40. Dried roots sell for $500+ per pound. link

The seeds are odd that they require almost 2 years of stratification. A young plant usually starts out as a “3 leaf”. Later 5 leaves and more than one “prong” as it matures.

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I see. I was aware of ginseng’s demand as a cash crop. I thought folks might have been consuming it as forage edible, but at those prices, it doesn’t make sense.

The berries won’t be red this time of year. But yes, there is a resemblance to Virginia Creeper in leaf appearance. Some of the Genseing has 7 or even 9 leaves though…or one or two or three.

Methley plum

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That will be the best ice cream ever!

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Anne, Caroline, Double Yellow, Josephine Red raspberries just starting to produce.

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