Well it finally happened. I have enough Goumi’s to actually do something with it. Jam or Jelly would be an obvious choice but since I was going out of town for a week I figured the birds would decimate my Raintree Select like they did my Sweet scarlet bush. So I picked as many as I could and set them to rest in sugar. I figured I would get a syrup like I do with green plums. What I got was a surprise. First Sugar has a hard time pulling moisture from Goumi’s. Batch 1 in the jar the kids helped me pick resulting in lots of bruised fruit. Took 2 weeks to liquify extract in the fridge. Batch 2 picked by me, did not liquify at all.
The berries in both batches are still juicy. The seed in the goumi has gone from something you can chew and spit out to something you can pleasantly chew and spit out. There seems to have been no change either the astringency or insipidness so this is not a substitute for picking the berries when dead ripe.
My daughter however did not care for the sugared berries. perhaps the sugar pulled out the flavor and left the astringency and insipidness behind. Fortunately the birds appeared to have left the berries alone over my vacation so i have more dead ripe berry material to work with.
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maybe try mashing them. the lycopene in them doesnt mix easily with water.
Mashing is to easy. I’m not trying to get result I started for. I am trying to see where this process takes me. Next I think I will try drying some of these sugar infused berries in the dehumidifier.
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i saw a video of a guy that made fruit leather by crushing the berries and laying on parchment paper in the sun to dry. looked pretty darn good.
I don’t know what i did differently now. Maybe it it was not drying the berries after washing them. But somehow they became well frosted with sugar this time.
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For the bird problem… someone here mentioned success with keeping birds away from fruit using flash tape. I ordered some from amazon… and it arrived a few days ago.
Before I put it in place the birds were taking most of my blueberries… and I could look out the window and see them landing on my bushes and hoping from limb to limb taking the ripe berries.
3 or 4 days now with the tape up and flashing in the wind… and my blueberry bushes have nice ripe berries on that have not been taken. I have looked out the window many times and no birds in sight near the flash tape or near my blueberry bushes.
Seems to be working nicely so far.
My goumi are gone for the year… but I will sure try this on them next year. I know birds got a lot of mine.
TNHunter
should post this to the other goumi thread Goumi fruit - General Fruit Growing - Growing Fruit this is for cooking ideas.
@lordkiwi ---- I posted that info on the bird flash tape for that person that was having this problem…
“I figured the birds would decimate my Raintree Select like they did my Sweet scarlet bush.”
Oh wait… that was you 
@murky – I think it may have been you that posted that a week or two ago. Well I took your advice and ordered some of that flash tape, and so far it seems to be working nicely. The clear evidence is that I go out to harvest blueberries and there are big fat fully ripe berries hanging all over the bush… and no birds have taken them.
I am going to put up more today, in my blackberry patches.
Thanks for posting that info.
TNHunter
I will be taking the advice however and ordering some flash tape for next year. This year was the first year we had blueberries in any quantity and they all went to the birds. They didnt even wait for them to ripen.
even though birds havent been a issue here i put out some flash tape to protect my ripening cherries and blackberries. lots of honeyberries right now but birds so far havent touched them. knock on wood!
