Hardy Berries and Currants: Spring Field Notes

northern gooseberry, Ribes hirtellum flowering this week

haskaps need two bushes to cross pollinate, different cultivars have some variation in the flowering time so you want

them to overlap. yesterday I found nearly every haskap flowering at once. photos are berry blue, aurora, beast, beauty. but walking around I also saw tundra and I think indigo gem flowering. So if you're hoping to get...

a bed of elderberries, tarped for one year to smother the grass, now dug to transplant into

this one has room for eight cultivars. Do elderberry survive in zone 3? well yes sort of, with good conditions heavy soil and some thick mulch. I have found one old bush that survives above the snow, so far I've yet to...

packing up berry bushes like these polar jewel haskap grown in lalge plugs and stuffed into a small pot, shrink wrapped

bundles of plugs, and other assorted. a couple days off while it was below freezing and we're back at it, hoping another 2 weeks to finish with...

I have a collection of wild Ribes, grown from cuttings and old enough to flower, working on 100% id for each native

species. the flowers are particularly helpful when you want to distinguish between similar...

the most surprising thing about wild american black currants, Ribes americanum, is how good they taste

If you've tried Crandall currant, a selection of another species it has a similar flavour with no astringency, they're very tasty. and they're native, grown from seed, I was lucky enough to find a local patch of them...

happy to see twisp river, a red flowering currant survived the winter with good snow cover

Ribes sanguineum is rarely grown in zone 3, but popular in europe. the cold hardiness reports...

self pollinating, white currants on this small plant set some fruit after just a few weeks from breaking dormancy under

grow lights where they're hiding out until the weather...

a couple of weeks from breaking dormancy this year old white current decided to bloom super quickly under the grow

currant, gooseberry hardwood cuttings in gallon grow bags under lights, establishing new stock plants

I would move them to the greenhouse if I had the room, greenhouse addition is on my list after planting is done. for new plants like this they should be carefully moved outside, in the shade for at least a week is a good...

black currant hardwood cuttings shipped with some damp paper towel around the base, creates the perfect moisture level

and conditions for some quick rooting. this winter I experimented with several indoor setups for rooting hardwood for currants, gooseberry, grapes, figs, mulberry, elderberry. I found best results with: 1. no bottom heat...

checking some nursery beds we have currants and gooseberries leafing out, and you can see my row tags to keep

the varieties straight. these plants don’t mind some frost at all, even while it’s been...

first signs of spring, red elderberry and chokecherry buds swelling

a good indication that my medium was too wet for this tall currant cutting, it only rooted at the surface

My 60:40 peat:perlite mix seems too hold too much moisture, next year will AB test some 80:20 .. still...

wow this currant has some nice roots after just ten days

I like the heavy rooting cultivars, this one is boskoop...

the forest around our place is full of wild raspberry, and I enjoy the tea/tisane made from the leaves

bags like this are just available at seedy saturday events from us. going...

wolf willow and sea buckthorn are in the same family, so I’m trialing grafts with a couple of kinds of sea buckthorn

onto the trees. other genera in the family do have compatibility, so maybe there’s...

grafting over sea buckthorn with some cultivars, the stock trees are all male so it will be nice to have some fruit

and also grow out softwood to root. #grafting...

hardwood cuttings in bags to hold onto moisture

these are in tall pots on bottom heat, in my grow room at 22C. I started with elderberry, and also attempting some Ribes . Once they root I leave the bag on for a week just loosely on top and then monitor the leaves...

Lilac and currants are first to leaf out in our raised beds

These were softwood propagated under mist last summer. #propagation...

elderberry budding out

this was under the snow last week, what a hardy...