The Japanese seedling nursery produced relatively well as we harvested this week. There will still be another small harvest next week sometime and then the fence comes down and the serious cleanup and pruning will begin. I hope to take some hardwood cuttings to start next winter.
Most of the flavours had improved and yields were good on some plants. So far this harvest has been turned into jam, jelly, pies, and now a Mennonite style cold soup called moos. Trials today! Last year we had another dish called rollkuken with a Honeysuckle filling. Very good indeed. There is a picture in the blog archive. Who knows what will be next! The winner for all around plant is 34 and the winner for largest berries is 33. 33 is on the scale! Looks good but is slightly lacking in flavour. I have found that there are 2 berry types in this collection - 1 is plumb bob shaped and the other is a flattened oak barrel shape. As you can see the #33 bush has the flattened oak barrel shape and is larger, however in overall flavour and dry stem wound harvest the plumb bob shaped fruit are tops. There was also a Blue Velvet seedling in this group with very good flavour but it was only the second year for this plant so not much fruit and maybe it was a little earlier and the birds got them.
There are about 60 seedlings to find a home for before winter so that will be the next project.
