The new year begins with..............

Well there has not been much going on since the snow fell and covered the ground. All the Blue Honeysuckles are in their places and waiting for spring! So last evening I took out the last of the berries I had saved for seed and put them out to thaw. This is a very interesting process as it became evident right away that of the 9 or so types, there was a real difference in skin breakdown and leakage. By morning most of the samples had given their juices up to the baggies but several show go holding power. Interesting to watch!

 Number 31

 Number 29

 

Note that number 7, 8 and number 31 did not essentially melt away.

Numbers 11 and 51 are plants from which I have been able to share some seeds. They are the best of the Lonicera caerulea kamchatika and Lonicera caerulea edulis respectively. From this present group I have saved seeds of 29, 31 and 42 to try a few plants of each. My favourite is 29 as it looks like a banana and I think it could be encouraged to grow even longer and thicker with good management. Very easy to pick.

The remaining berries went into a small batch of liqueur as a trial. Reports I have heard so far do not seem to indicate this will be a success but we will see after 3 months. I found this group of  recipes on GardenWeb Forum Far North under Conversations..

On another note, we had Bernis from Northwood Garden News drop in and bought an arm load of jams and jellies and the last of our frozen berries. Nice. You can find her Blue Honeysuckle blog here.

Nearly time to start seeding but I am waiting for more of my lilies to finish blooming and then I can clear the shelves.

Just for fun

Well most of the honeysuckles are in the ground but the 2 year olds in pots will have to stay there for the winter and we will see what lives.
So far we are having a great fall and still planted lily bulbs last week. This is very unusual for us.
Thought some of you might find this little journalism project by a CBC French network reporter interesting. Click on the link and then when  on the 12th of October date. When the video loads pull the time bar to 34 minutes and the video should start about Edible Blue Honeysuckle. This was a project by a CBC person who is starting out as a journalist and spent about 5-6 hours here and I do not know how long with Bob Bors at the U of S. All for this short 4 minutes or so. It was fun and I really appreciated his effort and his coaches conversations with us.
Check this link.


I am not sure how long it will be up so just be aware that I have no control over them.

The ground is prepared

Well we have removed 60 old plants and I have rototilled the area in preparation for planting. There will be a group of 120 plants go back in the ground on 3 ft. centres.
20 seedlings from Nimfa, Amphora, Dimzas, Morena, Fialka, and 15 of Leningradski Velikan will be planted in a somewhat randomized pattern to make a 10 x 20 plant block. 5 seedlings from a wild Russian selection will be integrated into the pattern where the L. Velikan is missing. A very interesting trial as the plants look quite good but of course all the parent plants are old Russian varieties which are fair to good in flavour but not great. The Remaining 10 plants from the old nursery will be integrated into a new planting with about 8 from the Japanese variety. It may be spring before this happens as I have just heeled in the plants for winter in a trench and covered the roots.
There are another 28 plants to dig out and discard and 8 to heel in and then it will feel like something has been accomplished.

More to follow.

The pruning is evident

This last picture is of a selection that made the cut not the cutting. There has been so much plant material from the summers growth. Most of these have three years in the ground.

Just a follow up on the pepper - I know you wanted to know!

The pepper is properly called Capsicum annuum Robustini. You can see it offered for sale here and other places as well. We have had a few right off the plant and they are very good.

Blue Honeysuckle news to follow. We have a few 4L pails of berries for sale at $15.00/pail if you are in Saskatoon. These are individually frozen and then packed in pails.

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!