The internet was in need of orchard harvest time schedules, guides, or charts for USDA growing zone 4. So I made one. This shows the approximate harvest date for your home orchard or backyard orchard products grown in USDA Zone 4.
Tree and Shrub Orchard Harvest Window guide for Zone 4 Minnesota & Wisconsin:
May: Rhubarb (thru Sep). Foraging… Dames Rocket. Garlic Mustard 2nd year (1st white flowers in the woods). Black Locust flowers (other parts toxic). Ostrich Fern fiddleheads. Yellow rocket (distinguish from native look-alikes).
June: Juneberry aka Saskatoon. Goumi Berry. Strawberry. Honeyberry. Black Walnuts if picked green without shell. Sweet cherry.
July-Aug: Earliest Plums and Cherry plum. Early Seaberry. Forage… Stinging Nettle.
August: Peach. Apricot. Most hybrid & Japanese Plums. Early pear. Mid Blueberry. Michigan Huckleberry. Buffaloberry. Forage… Amaranth.
Aug-Sep: European Plum. Early season apple. Hardy kiwi. Elderberry. Late Seaberry. Hazelnut. Cornelian Dogwood.
September: Late Pear. Aronia (early Sep). Hawthorn. Siberian C (specialty) Peach. Grapes (e.g. “prairie star”).
Sep-Oct: Mid apple. Crabapple. Quince. Shagbark Hickory nuts. Butterheart aka Buartnuts (in WI not MN). Lingonberry 2nd crop (hangs thru Christmas).
October: Late apple. Pawpaw. Apios americana (throughout summer). Nannyberry (fruit soft at leaf drop, hangs dry into snowfalls). Black Walnut (can collect to process later). Early Chestnuts. Limited set of early Persimmons.
Oct-Nov: Northern Pecan.
November: “Early-to-Mid-Season” Chestnuts produce some years. Medlar. Highbush Cranberry (fruit hangs thru Feb). Forage… Garlic mustard 1st year rosettes (green until Thanksgiving like motherwort). Note: invasive Buckthorn seedlings hold green leaves Nov 01 thru Nov 10 after natives, easiest time to pull.
December: Eat the Medlar.
January: Highbush Cranberry.
Notes:
Foraging above means eating “weeds” that weren’t intentionally planted.
Annuals calendars:
The internet really needs this kind of document for each USDA growing zone. It’s not something found in a general-purpose book on Amazon because the publisher wouldn’t dedicate 10 pages to lists where 9 of 10 pages don’t apply to each consumer. A nursery wouldn’t have this because the varieties wouldn’t be coming from just one nursery – invasive weeds, the perennial rhubarb, and natives are in there with cultivated trees.
