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.