Fruit season is over and cleanup starts

The fruit season here was quite extended with the Russian lines being early and ending with the Japanese types finishing near the end of July. There was so much growth this year that it was very hard to pick berries as I have commented previously. So many berries fell to the ground and we finally just quit picking as we had all the berries we needed. It is a lot of work to hand pick when the bushes are short. We used some old milk stools to get us down near the plants and berries!

Today I started cutting off the tops of plants in the Japanese type nursery. There are 8 plants here out of 36 that I will move into a grouping with the selections out of the Blue Velvet and Russian cross seedlings. There are 6 - 8 plants in that group which will be kept and the rest will be dug out so I can work the area up and add some amendments.

This week I spent about a day and a half pulling weeds out of potted Edible Blue Honeysuckle seedlings from last year and this year. Many very nice plants and I am hoping to get them in the ground this fall if everything works out.
This is what the Japanese nursery looks like today as I have gone through with a hedge trimmer and loppers to get the plants ready to pull/dig out. This is the very hard part of breeding and selection. I can remember my first couple of years in barley research where we threw out about 80% of the material and the other 20 or less got moved up to the next year. Amazing!

It looks quite bare here but that is ok. Next issue is pulling out the roots, moving the keepers, and working the soil. A few days work no doubt. With the huge growth this year there is quite a pile of plant material removed. Thankfully the summer has been good to get the soil moisture up for the transplanting season through September and into early October. You can see some of the potted material along the side of this nursery. The count of potted plants to go into the ground is just over 200. There are about 12 groups of plants (some are miscellaneous) from various sources The ones I have been following for germination and survival are some seeds from named Russian varieties. They look like this:

1. Morena 24 seeds/20 plants
2. Nimfa 24 seeds/23 plants
3. Amphora 24 seeds/24 plants
4. Leningradski Velikan 24 seeds/15 plants
5. Fialka 24 seeds/22 plants
6. Dimzas 24 seeds/20 plants

It is hard to know why the L. Velikan was so low but I have not grown any of these myself (seeds were a gift) so the fruit may not have been as mature or ?. All in all it has been a good season. Next year there will be a need to grow some plants from cuttings as I want to propagate some special selections. Key one is plant # 29 which is Banana Blue(see the picture on the previous post. I am so curious to see what the seedlings from this plant would look like. Bigger better berries I hope.

Well it was nice to have this time indoors. Today has been exceptionally windy and still quite warm. A great summer day! Hope yours was good too! Something totally not EBH.

My first ever peppers in a greenhouse. Just never thought to grow them this way but they were alittle late for the garden so I kept them in large pots. These are called Robusta but I can't seem to find information about them at the time of writing. Maybe someone can help.

Time for an update

Well the picking season stretched out more than I would have liked. With all the rain the plants have grown spectacularly and there is a lot of plant to deal with when you are trying to find the berries! In many cases I pruned as I picked so that we could get at the berries but also to get between the plants. The Japanese nursery was the worst since these plants are on a 5 or 6 ft. square planting and nearly filled in the space between. As this picture shows, getting through was nearly impossible. Where I had put the netting over the rows in the larger nursery, the plants and the weeds grew up through the netting and it was difficult to remove the netting. We finally just quit picking and the rest is for the Robins and Cedar Waxwings. There are about 35 lbs. of individually frozen berries in the freezer .

I have also come to the conclusion that I cannot handle so many plants so this summer and fall there is going to be a huge renovation job as I pull/dig all the unselected plants. So far I have selected about 7 plants from anything that is 3 years old or older and the rest will be destroyed. There are still about 80 plants in the ground which need one more year for a chance to produce fruit. One of the unique berries I found is shaped somewhat like a banana and is good flavoured. This one I think could be a great home grower as it is so easy to harvest. I just need to be sure of a pollinator for it. Probably any Russian source will work good. This picture was from June when they were still growing. So lots of work ahead. Then there are the pots from last year and this year waiting to be planted out. Another big job to be done. No site for these yet but maybe once I have pulled all the others that I have planned to pull there will be some room. I have come to the conclusion that the Polish source berries are quite strong flavoured so there may be more room next year once I can cull them out as well.

These seedlings have done very well in the shade of the greenhouse. Nice and tall which is very good. You can see they have company as I have started daylilies, clematis, and even weeds in the pots. The weeds need to go!

I have not heard any reports as to how people have done with their berry crops, particularly EBH so if you are dropping in to read please leave a comment and I will publish it up front (as well as in the comments) so people get a sense of how things are going with EBH.

So far I have collected seed from 2 plants which I will carry on to further testing. I have also collected berries from plants that I want to extract seed from but did not get them done yet.
For the first time I am seeing volunteer plants around the nurseries. This is not really surprising as this year every seed seems to be growing. Lots of apple and chokecherry seedlings in areas where I have not tilled. Some may get saved for planting out in other spots. I left a large part of our front yard to grow out and it is amazing the plants that are there when they get a chance to grow. Even a sucker from a wild plum which is about 10 feet away.
So until next time, happy berry picking!