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Concerned about early bud break!

Well this fall weather has produced some strange things and one of them is early bud break. This is happening on fruit trees and shrubs here and the honeysuckles are no exception. It is quite concerning when you look and see fresh green and know it will get frozen in a month or so.
Here is a look!

 This is a Honeysuckle tip!

This is a Chokecherry tip!














I did not check others but I expect there could be some damage as well!

Summer cultivation and clean up continues!

Finished pulling out the old carpeting I had laid down between the rows of my Edible Blue Honeysuckle so this week I could roto-till the pathways and clean up a little. Still some serious pruning to be done to get rid of the low growing branches and make the plants smaller.
Here are some pictures of the new look.

As you can see there is Quack Grass and also Canada Thistle and Sow Thistle still growing so that needs to go too!

July 2016 Clean Up

I decided to give the honeysuckle nursery/orchard a real clean up so
have pruned all plants with the hedge trimmer and pushed all the
cuttings out of the paths. I plan to remove all the old carpeting and
till between the rows and the plants if it is at all possible.

I have attached several pictures of the clean up results.

We only got about a handful of berries again as we were away when the
plants should have been covered with netting. Cedar Waxwings and even
Robins are real pests for us here.

Harvest season over! It was much better.

Well we got about 40lbs of berries this year which is way above the last 3 years. And generally speaking the berries were quite good. Some were rather large! A number of these plants were from seed from Poland and those plants did have some big berries. Sadly many of these also were quite strong to bitter flavoured.

 Compare these to the leaves.

Flavour went from medium sweet to quite bitter. Part of the problem is the birds (Cedar Waxwings) got the topmost berries and then the rain caused excess new growth which covered over what was left. Cool weather and lack of sunlight causes a greater uptake of tannins and anthocyanins from my experience in Barley breeding. We always saw a greater increase in red and purple colors during the cool, wet seasons.

The final gathering was from pruning out the lower branches and there were many good collections of berries under the protection of the heavy leaf cover!

I plan to do a lot of extra pruning this year and also will discard some of the plants which have very bitter flavours.
And of course you have to try something with the berries so this year my wife Marg made a pie with 1/2 Edible Blue Honeysuckle and 1/2 blueberries. A good combination but still quite rich and tart. Lots of dark blue coloring though so really healthy in spite of the sugar.

I did gather a few berries for seed but not sure if I will plant anything this year.

Best looking pan full of berries today!

Here are a couple of pictures from this afternoon.
Nice collection of berries mostly from 2 bushes. Good flavours to!

The picker! Well covered to combat mosquitoes!

 The berries! Very nice color!

Polish Seedlings and berry picking

Picked again today with a cloud of mosquitoes! They are persistent so I pulled on a white long sleeved shirt (had on grey coveralls to start) and took out some citronella candles along with on Off Belt Clip and it did go better.
Most of the berries are in the lower half of the plants as the Cedar Waxwings cleaned the tops off of berries. This means the berries are a little more bitter than I would like by heh!, we have not gotten berries like this for 4 years at least!

I was picking in a mixed population of seedlings mostly from seed I got from a friend in Poland. The berries are big (Big Berry was the designation for the seed) and can be good flavoured nearer the top.

 Some of the berries which are a little red are TART but they have not had sunlight way down under the leaves. Jam and jelly will still be good!

We will get some berries!

Today I picked this little pan of berries off of some seedlings which were not inside the netting but did have some netting over them!

 This pan was from one bush and I did lose a number of berries because they were in fall off mode. A very loose connection which made easy picking. Also the berries are long so easy to get a grip with your fingers.

 There are a few berries here from other plants on top of the other slim berries. I think the bigger berries are from seed I got from a friend in Poland and he just called them Big Berry as he also sent me seed from one he called Big Bush. I hope to get some berries from those plants as well.

It's July 2nd already!

Well we did have a good crop of fruit set but the Cedar Waxwings are demolishing all the fruit in the yard including the Blue Honeysuckle. So we got some nets up and it might help some. I would like to see them leave! Robins are bad too.

Here are the nets.

Hopefully we will get more than the 2 liters of poor berries we got last year!

Further to Cold Climate Gardening comments

So I decided to do a little looking for resources for Alaskan gardeners and found a couple of interesting items
Redoubt Reporter article.

Alaska Berries


Great story!

From my garden and the beyond.

 One of my Japanese plants

Leningradski

My apologies to the author as I do not remember where I got this.

Old article............Follow up

I am still getting the occasional question or comment coming through from the article I wrote for Cold Climate Gardening Blog several years ago. You can see the article here.
Nice to know people are still finding the article and trying the fruit.

My own work with the plants and seeds is really on hold and some of the plants have found there way to Swan River area in Manitoba. Probably more will go as I wind up this operation and consolidate the efforts to some other areas of life.
I still have a bout 80 plants or so and would really like to get a good harvest experience out of it before I quit!
This is how things look now - taken several weeks ago and there is no change at this point.

If you need a pick me up I am sending you over to an artist friend of mines blog for some good art and stories. Be sure to dig back into some early posts which tell some great stories.

His daughter started a blog with some good nature photography but has not posted for a while. I understand that as I am not here very often either.

On the market in Saskatoon

I have been keeping an eye out for what is coming into the market here for Blue Honeysuckle. So far at Home Depot and Walmart I am seeing the two varieties Blue Moon and Blue Velvet. The plants look very stretched and spindly as in this picture. I noticed the branches break very easily. Not a good sign for the market.

I am glad to see Blue Velvet on the market here so I may have to pick one up yet.

My own plants are /have been blooming like crazy but there seem to be very few pollinators.

Finally spring and the Blue Honeysuckle are blooming

Well it was a long winter no doubt and there was some damage by mice and deer but so far things look pretty good in the orchard. I was surprised to find some plants really quite chewed up by the mice or voles but not a lot of stems stripped which means the tops will still bloom and bear fruit. This is one of the worst but it is in a group of Russian seedlings which are a disaster anyway!

 These are 5 cuttings of my plant number 51. I like the uniformity.

 Very nice shape. Worst weeds are the dandelions.

 This is a seedling of Nimfa. I think the one behind it is too but I did not check the tag. I seem to be able to pick them out in this randomized block.

Another good bloomer. Let the bees come!!

More later.

Bee n thinking about spring.

One of the issues most fruit growers is pollination of their fruit plants. Blue honeysuckle are particularly a challenge as they are self fertile and need pollen from another suitable plant from the species. One of the early possibilities is solitary bee species who are resident in the area and who emerge early in spring. One source of ideas is the Instructables web site. If you type in Solitary bee there are a number of simple housing projects which come up and are reasonable for anyone who is handy with a saw and electric drill. Here is a link to one that I thought was quite artistic.

Interestingly Lee Valley also now carries one made of plastic.

There are many resources on the internet regarding Mason Bees and others who might serve well in the early season pollinating process.

Here is what the result can look like!

 

 

How I hope this summer can be a good producer again!

Found this site with so many wonderful looking possible choices to build. Enjoy!

A few fall observations

Well I must apologize to anyone who is following this site because I just have not been posting here. The summer was disappointing to say the least as so many things did not go well. Though there was good fruit set and good moisture there was little production due to the Cedar Waxwings and high winds we ended up with about 2l of poor quality fruit from about 200 to 250 plants. The tallest plants seemed to really take a beating from the wind especially. The birds even climbed up under the netting to eat the berries. Bah!

So here is what is happening right now. I am watering new seedlings with drip irrigation and the big plants are getting some rainwave watering as long as we can.

 The rainwave is not very visible here but it is happening. With no rain it has been very dry and for some plants it has cause premature leaf drop.

 I still have more than 60 pots which need to get planted into the ground. These are about 4 years old in the pots so they really need to get their roots spread out.

Here is an example of the drying out in some seedlings which are seriously affected by the lack of water.

We are into a grey day so that is why these pictures are a little dull.

Nothing to report!!

Well this year was/is a disaster in terms of berry harvest so that is why you have not seen anything posted here! We got about 2 l off of over 250 plants and those were not really great berries. I think it is time to thin out the nursery and get it down to something we can manage with good netting to keep out birds and some kind of windbreak. The wind whipped the berries off of the taller older plants and the Cedar Waxwings just keep eating till there was nothing left. Even under the netting which we pulled over the rows! They would fly down to the ground and hop up into the bushes. Then if you came along they flapped about till they were on the ground and out they flew. Bah.
I did see someone on another blog talking about using the kind of row covering you would use in spring to protect the plants from frost and I think if we are here and there is opportunity to do that, we will buy some and try it.
Here is an example as sold by Lee Valley. Our problem is we have several row widths and heights to contend with but I think I would still try it!
I don't even have pictures.

Until next time.

Clayton

Seedlings starting! Wow.

Only one but here they come.

New post over at A Prairie Journal iin Saskatchewan

Did some seed planting today and there is a little info over at my Home blog. Here is a teaser.

Genes and Biodiversity

I received a query about Edible Blue Honeysuckle several days ago and in the conversation that ensued was asked my thoughts on the issue of paying royalties to breeders and plant protection issues.
My response with a little editing follows!

"I have struggled with that whole issue myself. But here I am, trying to do a little plant breeding, and I do not see myself as the end seller so where do I get something for my work!

Very few of us are really interested in going into the wild to select plants and then propagate them to sell. And the chances of finding good material in the wild is extremely rare.

So take the institute in this conversation(University of Saskatchewan). I know these folks personally and have had many conversations with Dr. Bob Bors. They have developed the first round on basically volunteer efforts and dedicated staff until just recently when they have begun to get some of this royalty money in and finally some grants for further work. So the fellow who plants 40000 plants gets a thriving business and the U of S gets not even a thanks for developing them unless there is a royalty or something like it. It really to me is a tough question because if we did not have good plants to choose from we would miss out on the experience of having them. And if we don't like it we are left with trying to find something in the wild that will suit our needs. So then we are robbing the biodiversity out of nature.

We could try growing from seeds but I can tell you that I have now planted about 500 plants and so far have about 10 that are worth keeping. Some of those seeds came out of the wild so even I have decreased the biodiversity of the natural stand somewhat although I did not get all the berries from the plants that produced the seed so that is a minimal invasion.

The genetics are only protected by honest people who see this as an opportunity to help the development process! There is very little to stop someone from taking cuttings and calling them something else and growing them and selling. Very few small organizations can afford to have something genetically proven to be their material so what is the likelihood of them ever following up.  This is already happening with at least two Russian varieties which are showing up on the market. The truth is very few people(read gardeners) will freely donate money to help further plant development.

The truth is if we go to the forest and remove plants or berries to some extent we are affecting the natural biodiversity. If we go buy a plant that has some "protected propagation rights" we are actually saving the biodiversity of the natural stands. Having worked in Barley breeding for a number of years, we seldom went back to the wild  for plant material to breed into the program. This is good! Especially if all that was taken in the first place was some seed and not the whole plant.

I have a friend who has bred Clematis for years. It cost him around $800 for registering (not sure 3 or 5 years) and he should have gotten some royalties from the sales. When it came time to renew he could not afford to pay the registration again. So every plant sold since then has returned him nothing! He has never even payed for the first registration! But people rave about his Clematis!

I do have problems with specific gene or rare plant or animal patenting (especially taking something out of nature) particularly if it is not self fertile but can out cross into other similar plants or animals. There is NO protection from these types of things in the natural environment and so the so called protected gene enters the natural realm and causes havoc; especially for farmers.

So buy two plants (Edible Blue Honeysuckle require 2 plants to cross pollinate), collect the seeds, grow them out and make your very own selections for the rest of the plants you would like to have. Or find someone who already is growing them and get seeds to grow from them."

This is a very small part of the whole question and there are many more angles to be considered.

Cuttings

I have never been very good at starting cuttings of any plants. I do try to get some going from time to time but it is not my forte and the point is that since I grow many things from seed I just don't need more of anything. This year I did want to get a few extra plants of the selected EBH which I kept while clearing out about 70 seedlings last fall. Shoot cuttings of active growth were stuck into a tray with seedling potting soil and kept under a clear plastic dome. I kept it in the east window of my garage so there was morning sun bu not the heat of the afternoon. When I finally removed the cuttings the was a callus on many but no roots.

What has amazed me is that the cuttings which took had a mass of roots!

This is plant number 51. There were 5 cuttings and they all produced this great mass of roots. It is a definite winner when it comes to propagation.
I tried 2 others as well and #29 did not root at all and #11 had one poorly rooted cutting. These were all in the same tray along with several other plants like Clematis, apricot and chokecherry. Since I do not need more plants this is not a great loss but I would surely like to improve my methods.