It has been a long time but!

Just a few notes about how things are going.

Nearly all the Japanese plants had fruit this year. Some with very good size berries. Flavour is tending to be sharp but not bitter. Fruit set was limited and I am sure it was from lack of pollinators. The first picking of a serious nature was yesterday July 7th. Still a few to come and some plants with no ripe fruit. One plant in particular has very large fruit and another has a more rounded fruit.

I also have about 60 plants from Polish and Russian sources to plant out this summer. I find the seedlings tend to be very hardy all around. Looking forward to the planting.

Some seeds have arrived as well as some cuttings

Well I finally have something to plant as I received seeds recently from a gardener in Europe. Should be a nice addition to my growing orchard. Also received some cuttings in the mail which was quite a surprise. I have never been good at rooting cuttings so we will see how it goes.

I see too that T & T Seeds are marketing a couple of Russian varieties under new names but they won't identify which Russian varieties they are.

Not a lot new here

The newly planted seedlings are doing fine. Poorest growth is on the plants I bought from a garden centre! Seems too bad. I am waiting for seed from Russia but so far nothing has arrived. I am enjoying a good exchange of comments and thoughts with a new acquaintance in Poland. He has found several sources of seed which might work for me next year. Otherwise we wait!

New Things Happening

Well my honeysuckles are getting well established and I am impressed with how they are sending up new shoots. This is good! I need to find some kind of organic mulch before winter if I can.

Here are some pictures of Dewdrop tip cuttings rooting in peat pellets. Sure glad to see these roots. Maybe I can get them in the ground before winter.

I have also found a source of seed in Alberta as well as have had new contact from Russia. Hopefully these seeds will all make their way here. I have a new contact in Poland who is a home gardener as far as I can tell and this is the group I really want to draw on if possible. Sometimes people are lucky and find or grow a real winner! I am still trying to find someone with a collection of Dairy Queen take out sundae cups to use for starting cuttings.

New nursery planted Tuesday July 10

New









Old

Honeysuckle Update

Dewdrop from T&T appears again to not be growing. This time I got a cutting from the shoot tip so hope it will grow.
Also planted Berry Blue and Blue Belle so my 1st test plot is nearly full. Several of my Japanese seedlings just are not coming back so have a couple of replacements for them.

Did not have time to take in the Haskap gathering last week but it looked like a good gathering as I took time to stop and say hello to a couple of people.
There is a lot of interest in production.

New honeysuckle arrived

Got a single plant from T & T Seeds of Dewberry Honeysuckle. It is just a cutting but it has flower buds! Potted up for now and will transplant to the trial plot in about 2 weeks.

All the seedlings and cuttings I have are looking good but I am working on a new piece of test ground which needs to be cut out of a sod area. It will be 40 x 80 ft. Another big project.