I love berries, and there are so many different types of berries that I can only dream about growing in my area. I would love to hear about some of your more unheard of berries (basically not blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries or mulberries) that you grow or wild forage.
Personally, I collect the beautyberries that grow all over our yard. They make an excellent glaze that tastes delicious on steak. I also have some dwarf serviceberry seeds that sprouted, but I don’t have a lot of faith that I will ever see fruit from them. It’ll depend on how they do with short winters.
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Just for clarification (and because someone will ask anyway 
), I assume, you are asking about berries as in small fruit, not berries in the botanical sense (cucumber 
, saskatoon 
) ?
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Yes, berries as in small fruits. They are the perfect size to just plop in your mouth from the plant.
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I have a lot of wild saskatoons on my property and they love my climate, but unfortunately I don’t love the fruit. So seedy.
Oregon grape are nice, got a ton of those. Indestructible native shrub, nice ornamental, and they make good jam!
Thimbleberries too. They don’t produce a lot but their taste is awesome.
And chokecherry keeps trying to take over my yard. Supposedly it was a food staple of local first nations, but I can’t figure out how to eat them. So astringent.
My favorite local berry to seek out and pick, black huckleberry, grows in higher elevation, wetter areas and would not work in my yard. E-Flora BC Atlas Page
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Thimbleberries and salmonberries were actually why I made this thread. They sound so good! The temptation to try to grow them (and probably waste my money) is so high.
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I live in z5 Central Vermont. I am able to grow serviceberries easily. I have an entire hedge along the sidewalk of the Regent variety, which are only supposed to grow 4-6’ tall. They are so colorful and the birds get most of them which is fine. I also have a Autumn Brilliance serviceberry. They both do sucker quite a bit. I’m hoping that in a few years, that will calm down. They are very sweet, but kind of insipid tasting–like sweet water. I do mix them with other berries as a natural, safe sweetener. I also grow kiwi berries, which fruited for the first this year. I’m quite excited to taste them. I have goumi, che, all sorts of currants (red, black, clove, champagne) jostaberries and gooseberries, bush raspberries and arctic raspberries (neither of which have fruited yet), lingonberries, aronia, hawthorn for heart medicine, Cornelian and bush cherries, elderberries, and I started eating Kousa dogwood berries a few years ago, which remind me of pawpaws. It’ll be a few years until my pawpaw start fruiting, so they will have to do–a lot more labor-intensive! Basically, when taking a break from gardening, I’ll sit on a bench that I have below the dogwood and suck the fruit from an opening and then toss the skins. Of course, I do have other typical fruits as well: strawberries, blueberries, mulberries, etc.
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cornelian cherries - grow and forage
elderberries
hawthorns (native and Big Mao)
sloe (blackthorn)
rose hips (rosa canina, rosa rugosa, rosa villosa)
elderberries
saskatoons
honeyberries
autumn olives
sea buckthorn
yew (not great but we do eat some, mainly when we have visitors - for the kick of watching the scared faces)
guelder-rose
many sorbus and aronias and their hybrids - I really like tannins in my fruit
wild grapes
I have a bunch of cornus kousa seedlings from urban-foraged fruit
What I can’t grow but forage in the mountains are mountain cranberries and crowberries.
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I grow a lot of serviceberry. They thrive here.
I would love to grow thimbleberry. It’s one of my favorite berries, but the plant isn’t productive.
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How different are kiwi berries in taste from kiwi fruit? They look like little tiny kiwis, so I assume they are related. Are they just cold hardy, small versions? Che is one of the plants I’m willing to try, I have seeds stratifying in the fridge and I might look for a tree to order to plant in September.
I wish I could grow lignonberries. The syrup they make is so good, I can imagine how tasty the actual fruit is.
I see honeyberries and autumn olives mentioned alot here. Honeyberries always peak my interest, but I probably don’t get the chill for them (150 hours was the highest weather station around me, and thats not adjusted for warm days). Autumn olives pontentially would do well, but it looks like UF/IFAS (our state land grant uni) discourage it becauae they are possibly very invasive.
Are sea buckthorns the same thing as seaberries? When I googled it thats what came up. Do they taste good? I saw some conflicting info on if they need chill hours or not, but other than that, it looks like they would grow well here. Maybe? They would be a nice splash of yellow if anything else.
Didn’t know roses had a fruit, makes sense though. I wonder if the ornamentals had it bred out of them? Never heard of sloe or crowberry either. They both look pretty cool.
My kiwi has yet to ripen, only forming for the first time, but I had tasted one from a vine at a bakery up north. They had them climbing to cover a pergola set up for outdoor dining. I don’t believe it was fully ripe, yet it was sweeter than the fuzzy kind you get at the store. When you figure in all of the peeling involved with those, these are so much better…you just pop them in your mouth and they are so much tastier (sweeter) but have the same structure inside–almost like fig seeds. You do need to order a male and female in order to get fruit, and they do grow many feet in a season requiring numerous prunings. They also require a strong structure to climb on. It would be a mistake to plant them on your house or something like a cattle panel. When they fruit, eventually it will be hundreds of pounds, and the tendrils curl around and strangle, so I wouldn’t plant it to grow up a tree or a building of any sort that you care about unless you are VERY diligent. If you’ve got a free-standing structure that is strong, they will cover it in short order. Mine are in their fourth year, but some can take up to seven years before fruiting.
A lot of the fruit that I now have is about that age, that being said, so much of it has yet to fruit. Each year, it’s very exciting to see what will come to bear. This year, my quince has fruited and I have about 20 coming, yet my medlar and lingonberries have yet to fruit…The che was planted only last year, and already, it has a few fruit. I guess I should expect that they will drop, so it will be a few years on that. The hawthorn was planted only this spring, yet it flowered a little. I imagine next year there might be some berries…The goumi was also planted this spring and I got one to taste. I think I’ll really like it. It’s fun to do my daily walkabout and see the progress of everything. It will be an exciting day when I spy my first pawpaws and persimmons. I have a few more years on each of those I suspect.
It’s so funny to me that people will say, “I don’t want to wait so long for fruit; it’s not worth it,” when time goes by so fast. In four to seven years from the time of planting, most things will be producing, yet had I not planted these things, I never would have anything. Already, I have so much asparagus…yes, I had to wait two or three years, but here we are! The hazelnuts and heartnuts just have a few years more before they start kicking out nuts. It’s actually kind of nice that it’s been gradual, as I learn of ways to preserve.
I got a canner and have been building my stock of jars; I also have a apple peeler, corer, slicer for when the apples start in earnest. I got a cherry pitter in anticipation, but the tree contracted brown rot. I will spray something a little stronger than whey next year. Although the peach was filled with blossoms, only three are still hanging. It got leaf curl, so I imagine that set it back a bit. At least I didn’t have to thin the fruit. First year for both of those six year old trees. At some point, I’ll need to invest in a larger dehydrator. Right now, I have one of the cheapy round ones that you just plug in without a temperature regulator. My issue is that I can’t think of a place to put it. This is my second year of making wine. I have dandelion, rhubarb and strawberry batches fermenting now and a batch of blackberry wine that I need to start. All this fruit has really extended my learning!
The fruit of roses are the rose hips. You often see them at shopping centers planted in the medians. In the fall, you’ll see bright orangey red fruit where the roses used to be. Very pretty and very nutritious. Also, if you’ve heard of sloe gin, that is made from the fruit of the sloe bush. Yes, sea buckthorn and seaberry are the same–rebranding! Like what used to be called chokeberries are now aronia! The seaberries do have thorns and can send up plants many feet from the original plant. From what I understand, they require a bit of sweetener to be very palatable, but are quite rich in vitamins and have been describes as tasting similar to OJ. They need full sun and both a male and female plant. I only have an acre here, and because of the thorns and their ability to run, I won’t plant them here…those or goji berries which apparently taste like rotting tomatoes! I tasted some at the co op that were dried and those I really liked. I guess if I get the hankering, I’ll buy a few. I just ordered some dried jujubes to taste them. Another one with thorns–something I’d prefer not to contend with!
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Yes, sea berries and sea buckthorn are one and the same. As with a number of other berries including lingonberries, whether you would enjoy them depends on your taste preference. If you’d pick a cube of sugar over a kiwi, you’d be disappointed. Most combine acidity, sweetness and tartness/ bitterness. Most varieties of sea buckthorn are very acidic when ripe. Some have more sugars than others, but the sourness is dominant - like with not quite ripe sour cherries.
As for sloe, we eat them fresh after frost. Then they taste like prune jam (best wild sleighing/skiing snack ever). You can’t really eat them before - they are sour and adstringent.
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I have hardy kiwis (baby kiwis) here. They taste like the big fuzzy ones but sweeter and less fibrous.
John S
PDX OR
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Sea grapes are tasty berry size fruit that grow on a tree. They have large seeds so the seed to flesh ratio is not ideal, but still pleasant to munch on on a bike ride
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I am waiting for them to ripen to try some! These are everywhere in broward county, hopefully they ripen up by the end of july before I leave.
These are berry size… but actually wild black cherry. They have a dark rich tart little sweet taste. That tree is in my back yard.
I have wild blackberries, elderberries, deerberry, dewberry, serviceberry but the rust gets them quick when they start to ripen.
Other wild things I harvest… morel mushrooms and chanterelle mushrooms, shagbark hickory nuts, ginseng.
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Might grab a couple seaberries. Do you happen to know how well/fast they grow by seed? Otherwise I’ll probably have to wait till next spring to get a pair, which is less than ideal. I think they’d be a good edge to my cactus garden I’m putting in this fall.
Never heard of deerberry before. Apperently theres a Florida version that can be in my area. Maybe I will see it when I check out the state parks. Always on the look out for native edibles. Dewberries always sounded very good to me as well, since I really like blackberries.
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@sharq … dewberries are good… similar to blackberry.
Deerberry (has several other common names)… it does not taste good… the birds love them and if you dont bag them… they will get them all before they ripen good. Chipmonks or field mice also love them… the one year i bagged some to get a few ripe berries… several of my organza bags got shredded and berries stolen. I figure that was chipmonks or field mice. When I finally got to try a few ripe berries… they tasted somewhat like soap… very bland soapy taste.
They do have beautiful spring blossoms.
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Yeah, deerberry definitely sounds like a wild forage if I get the chance, and not something to rush order on amazon. If I ever find some, I might take some seeds and throw them in the woods. The flowers would be pretty next to the wall of cherry laurels. That is until the green monster known as muscadine eats them up like everything else.
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My seedlings from last year are about 40cm tall. BUT I have no idea if they’re male or female, yet. And won’t know until they fruit in a few years. Then I’ll have to decide, if I’ll try to graft the males or keep them for chop&drop or leaf tea.
Plus, there are large fruited, easier to harvest, sweeter and almost thornfree varieties. You can grow those from cuttings even now. I have Botanika and Podruga.
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Thimbleberries! I planted a couple last fall and they seem to be growing well
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