@RedRam how do I know where raspberries or blackberries take over, vs where they can stay kind of contained? My neighbors will not be impressed if their manicured leaf-free yards have brambles popping up. Are there zones where they grow invasively vs not?
I’m such a newbie.
Add Edible Landscaping with a permaculture twist by @MichaelJudd to this list. I haven’t read all of these through, many just browsed so far. But the former I mentioned, The Backyard Orchardist, Arboriculture, and Plant Propagation are probably good places to start for references. Check Thriftbooks, ebay, half price books for used copies. Sometimes (especially holidays) Amazon and target offer buy 2 get one free and I take advantage of that.
Others that are considered “holy grails” (and the price reflects it) are
Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01NANQQZU/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_3H2ND9KZSMZKAQWF06NA?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
and Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set) https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1890132608/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_DE552HT5TB69QVR93YX4
Welcome and good luck. There are a lot of care-free fruits we can grow here in Mass. I’d suggest easing into it with only a few items this year. I feel like people learn so much about fruit growing their first year, and that ends up changing a lot of their original plans/ideas. Taking a year to ease in can help save a lot of money and heartache in the long run.
@IntrepidNewbie … on the taste of goumi.
The two I have… red gem and sweet scarlet… have similar fruit punch type flavor… not overly sweet… but some sweetness. You do have to wait until they are very ripe to get the best flavor and if eaten when they first look ripe there will be some astringency … a bit of zing and mouth pucker… nothing like a not quite ripe persimmon… but just a light bit is astringency. Let them hang on longer until deep red and perhaps starting to shrivel some and they are quite a treat.
They will not be your fav fruit… but they ripen very early so may be your only fruit that ripens that early.
Last year when mine ripened the only other thing I had that was ripening was some very early strawberries.
If you grow honeyberries… they may ripen that early too. I have a couple of honeyberry but mine have not fruited yet. Perhaps this spring they will.
Ps another good thing about goumi
… no spray ok… very low maint.
The blooms are georgious and smell great… attract pollinators.
Below a couple pics of mine from this past spring … 2 yr olds.
Good luck…
You’d have to look into it a bit, there’s a few good threads here. Just search ‘best raspberry’ or blackberry. I’m zone 5b so blackberries are kind of marginal here as it is. I have quite a few raspberries, though only a couple years experience so I can’t say for sure which are ‘invasive’ vs not. If you are going for thornless only, your choice will be pretty limited on raspberries anyway. Joan J is a good thornless one, that has very heavy yields, good taste, and I have not noticed any particularly aggressive spreading from it. I think there’s a lot more choice of thornless blackberries.
One other thing, I forget if you mentioned what city or region you are, but if you’re east coast you may have to contend with Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) fruit flies, which I gather are a major pest there, and can especially attack brambles. We don’t have them yet where i’m at so not a factor for me.
Do you have any spots in those woods where the sun shines through for a 10 to 20 foot circle… little bitty clearing?
I guess if you run out of reading material I could loan you some, and vise=versa! lol
I have as many but not quite as focused as yourse…although I have 3 or 4 of those same ones pictured.
I have the US Army guide to foraging, a forest gardening, couple mushroom books…but not the same ones you have.
Used to have a shelf of beekeeping books but lost to a fire couple dozen years back
The older I get the more I realize how little I know. This is just a part of trying to change that. I’d be interested in any you might recommend to add to the list! PM or post here if appropriate.
manana
I’m sleepy
I do bake pies but sour cherries also make excellent jam. You can also simply cook them up with some sugar and a bit of a thickner, like cornstarch, and then you have multi use sauce. (Or pie filling) It’s easy to make a preserved versions too. (With the help of pre-made, frozen pie crusts and a batch of sour cherries, you can produce a big round of pies very easily)
I have tried sorrels but the local bun-buns found it even tastier than dandelions so we never got any.
( luckily, the lettuces we like rate lower than the dandelions, so no issues there)
They don’t care about the asparagus either!
For raspberries, the black ones ( I think ours are niwot) are the least spreading. They pretty much only tip root from their clusters so almost no uncontrolled outward growth. Also, they are a great cooking berry and productive in slightly partial shade. Only drawback is the thorns.
Both our fall everbearing reds and summer yellows spread freely, but mowing keeps them from going too far.
The boysenberries are willing to spread, but it’s more of sending out vines along the ground so fairly easy to cut them off/ dig them out. We’re 5b ( Canada) and everything on them dies above the snowline. With them only fruiting on 2nd year canes, production is very low but what I get it delicious.
The ornamental raspberry is very pretty but spreads like a weed and really isn’t edible.
I dont have thoughts on either the Calloway crab or the Native American Sweet crab, as i do not have either. I have multiple pollination partners for my trees, as I grow many that overlap bloom time. In the planting of Winecrisp, Granny Smith and Honeycrisp, I also have Winesap, Prairie Spy, Golden Russet, Fuji, Crispin, Golden Delicious, along with several smaller apple trees that are yet to bear fruit. When i planted that block of trees, I put Golden Delicious in with Granny Smith and Honey Crisp as a pollination partner for both trees. It worked out well. I later added several crab apples and heirloom varieties to increase yields and harvest.
KHF,
Our native ‘Sweet Crab’, Malus coronaria, got the ‘sweet’ moniker due to the aroma of its blossoms. Most humans will regard the small, hard, green, musky, sour/astringent fruits as totally inedible. Wildlife like deer will eat them… they’ll lie on the ground all winter until they do. I suppose it might work as part of a cider blend… would certainly add some bitter, tannic notes.
Callaway crab, on the other hand, is quite tasty. For years, it was my kids’ favorite… y ou could fill your pockets with those tasty morsels and munch away. Fruits are ‘large’, for an ornamental crab, but rarely more than 1" diameter. It’s a heavy bearer… limbs will assume a semi-weeping character due to weight of the fruit crop. Mine is still bearing a heavy crop of fruit today (21 Dec)… eventually the critters will get around to eating them before Spring arrives.
No, sadly - and while I could have the arborist make a clearing when they come to remove some damaged / diseased trees… that feels pretty wrong to me.
Oh thanks! Then I’ll look at Callaway Crab and not Sweet Crab.
Thank you so much for the Goumi info. I’m ok with feeding critters and the soil, not just humans.
Yes, that’s one of the good ones to become familiar with different varieties!
This thread has a great discussion that will help you decide as well.
So far, the only Ribes in my planting that have exhibited WPBR symptoms are my Jahn’s Prairie gooseberries. Any Ribes can host it, but black currants are just the most susceptible (in general).
Back to the original topic, I love the idea, and it’s something I want to work on a bit as well. Some things to consider:
Easiest thing to do with sour cherries is make waffle/pancake topping. It’s really just pie filling. Just cook the cherries with some sugar and thickener (tapioca, flour or cornstarch) in a sauce pan. That’s it. You could even skip the thickener if you don’t mind it being runny.
While I like Callaway crab, and it has its place, it’s mostly outstripped by some of the larger ‘edible crabs/lunchbox apples’, like Centennial, Kerr, Chestnut, Whitney, Bastian Orange, Trailman, Dolgo, etc. If limited for space, I’d go for one of these, rather than Callaway.
