What have you given up on? Or plan to give up on in 2019

they are a rare treat up here but i could see how they would be a pain to harvest and store if you grew them in a large amount yourself.

Well Steve is right, if you canā€™t enjoy them get rid of them. I noticed to that the skin are rather hard to penetrate. I used some for jam and they didnā€™t want to bust. But like others say well worth it to me. I get it though some wonā€™t eat peaches because of the fuzz, and donā€™t like them enough to peel them. Others find the seeds in raspberries to hard and tend to stick in your teeth. Raspberry seeds have a substance known to reduce cancerous tumors. I know I should eat them, but when I process I remove seeds. I do eat tonā€™s raw though. My wife wonā€™t eat mushy apples or grainy pears, we all have a preferences. Mine is if itā€™s not food donā€™t eat it. It explains why Iā€™m in shape. Round is a shape right?

I think we all ribbed you a little because the grass is always greener on the other side. We canā€™t grow them in ground and love them! You can and prefer not to!
Feel free to send the wood this way if you have any left!

True, but true for most fruits. I stopped growing elderberries because I didnā€™t really like them enough to justify the prep work. When you have 50 flower heads with 100ā€™s of BB sized fruits. You have to freeze to remove them, and the stems are small. Itā€™s hours of work. Poms seem easy compared to that. And of course itā€™s a super fruit, so I really wanted them to work, it just did not for me.

3 Likes

Do you mean ripen at different times? Most of us really want that with fruit so as to have fresh fruit throughout the season. But when you have to process I find it better to have them ripen at once. I did that with red currants, they all taste the same no great difference in flavor. Rovada though has large berries, larger than most, and longer strings of them than most making harvest easier. So I pulled my other cultivars and Iā€™m in the process of rooting cuttings of rovada to replace them. So I can process all at once.

2 Likes

i gave up on aronia not because they were hard to process but i just couldnā€™t find a way that they would taste good. i tried everything . too bad as they are very easy to grow here and are a nice looking bush but so are currants and they taste so much better right off the bush. got some z4 nelson blackberries from fedco going in their spot.

1 Like

thats good to know. i have a perfection red i put in last spring. its a older cultivar but should give me enough for a good taste or a few pints of jam. got it off hirts for $4 so canā€™t go wrong. you ever try making cassis from your currants? if i get enough this year Iā€™m going to try to make some. sounds like a great summer drink.

1 Like

Iā€™m with you on the fuzzy peaches. However the fuzz can be rubbed off peaches. Itā€™s not difficult and a lot easier and faster than eating poms.

1 Like

If critters were enough to make me give up, I wouldnā€™t grow a thing. I cannot plant anything even remotely edible outside of the fence, or it will be obliterated by deer in three days. Iā€™ve just accepted that I have to fence things in.

2 Likes

I will be putting black currants in place of the elderberries! Oh you have Nelson? I wanted a Nelson for breeding, I decided to try Darrow, although Iā€™m not liking it, berries are small. or they sent me some crap. Iā€™m thinking the latter. Give us a report if you get any this year. I would really like to breed western and eastern together. probably impossible becasue of chromosome sets, blackberries have numerous ploidy levels.

Yes I had 6 cultivars and they taste alike to me. Different size berries, darker or lighter red, taste the same

Yeah I have always related the skin to the fuzz. Never thought about rubbing it off.
I do love good peaches though. My dad grew them so I grew up eating tree ripened peaches. My dadā€™s were top rate too! Peaches are special to me for that reason.

2 Likes

Thatā€™s why they have nectarines

3 Likes

ill be getting them in mid may. also am waiting for the pequot lakes blackberry at honeyberry USA to come back in stock. they are z3 hardy. supposed to be a good quality berry as well. when i get some sprouts, ill send you some to play with. :wink:

1 Like

Awesome thanks!

Many varieties of poms give you clues as to when that cultivar is ripe, but the clues differ for every cultivar. A change in color is significant in some cultivars and means nothing in others. Itā€™s very difficult to grow more than a few cultivars and keep up with the ripening habits of each. And many really give you very few clues at all. Wonderful doesnā€™t give many clues which is why it is almost always picked too early even by commercial growers. This is not a minor issue. When picked at its peak, Wonderful really is wonderful. When picked before itā€™s peak, itā€™s sharp and even bitter. Most will also ripen differently based on the summer heat units you have received. So fruit that ripened last year on August 1 will ripen this year on August 7.

2 Likes

not yet, but they are healthier than the ones I had previously lost.

Scott

1 Like

I have a Kazake Pom in the ground that has limped along for the past 5 years. At one point it was large enough to flower, though I didnā€™t get any fruit set on it. I did have 2 potted ones that did start fruit, but I lost them due to poor watering practices (I think).

It might end up on the shovel list, if it returns. If it shows no dieback from this winter (which is possible as it has been a relatively mild winter (with the exception of a very few days) then I may try to push it for heavy growth this year and actually protect it going into next winter.

Scott

OK, I wasnā€™t sure what you meant. yeah a lot of fruit is like that. I grow numerous blueberries and some are ripe when they turn blue, others need to hang 2 weeks after turning blue. Many people pick blackberries too early too. Itā€™s not when they turn, itā€™s when they get dull and the calyx turns crispy brown. Melons are real tough, well some are.

1 Like

I almost gave up on my Honeycrisp last year - itā€™s really too hot and the tree has not thrived or really grown. However it did bloom for me last year, giving it a year or so reprieve. If it doesnā€™t do any better this year, I may try grafting a couple of scions onto my Pixie Crunch, which is very precocious. Perhaps thatā€™d help the HC out.

Different varieties of watermelon can be a real pain.

Yes, Iā€™m having no luck, itā€™s too cold here. Now some musk melons I have grown, but I have only grown them a few times, not that interested and space is a problem. I rotate year to year. Like I grow sweet corn every other year. And only in a 4x12 raised bed, it works!

You should definitely grow them horizontally. If the melons in question grow to large, nylon stockings works beautifully.

1 Like

I do have room to do that!