Hardy Berries and Currants: Summer Field Notes

a large fruiting selection of Ribes odoratum, maybe a seedling of Crandall

It has uneven ripening, very large fruit size like small grapes and 2.5g. the bush is at least twenty years old, just starting to ripen at the end of July, the fruit is better tasting than other clove currants I've...

wild american black currant, Ribes americanum

I collect seed every year from a stand with delicious fruit, it ripens in late summer unevenly so you get hits attractive fruit set ranging from yellow to red to black. the bushes are upright, easy to grow and they've...

captivator gooseberry, oval teardrop shaped fruit, large

just starting to ripen in late july, they'll be a deep burgundy color when...

pink champaign currants, a variety of Ribes rubrum or red currants

like white currants, they have a sweet candy flavour, none of the astringency you can find in some red or black ones, and none of the typical musky currant flavour. in the same way that some of the best tasting clove...

canadian gooseberry, Ribes oxyacanthoides

a native gooseberry, the fruit are similar to northern gooseberries though they seem to ripen a bit earlier. The...

northern gooseberry, or smooth gooseberry

Ribes hirtellum. a native berry bush with almost no thornes, shown fruiting on july 20 and just starting to naturally drop some fruit, a good sign that they're at the right stage to pick. I have a few of these...

northern gooseberry (Ribes hirtellum) vs canadian gooseberry (Ribes oxyacanthoides)

both are about the same size, the canadian seem to ripen sooner. quite similar fruit,and the leaves on the plants are similar, the largest difference between these two native berry bushes is the northern is a more...

purple gooseberry

unknown if it's an old prairie cultivar, or a seedling from one. I know the bush was there 25 years ago at our old farm, it's crazy vigorous in full shade, and it has oval shaped fruit that ripen to a deep purple. I...

clove currant, golden currant - there are two species of these, one has black fruit, the other has variable colors

sometimes black but also red and yellow, orange. this accession is from the u of sask, only called missouri currant, and I have both R. aureum and R. odoratum growing here, this one flowers differently, so it's...

ribes americanum, wild american black currant

the little yellow dotted glands under the leaves are one give away, the...

last year I was lucky enough to receive a few seeds from the usda seed bank

these ones, Ribes lacustre didn't germinate but just in case I kept them watered and set the pots outside for the winter. There were something like 5 seeds the size of a grain of sand in each pot, some of them old like...

in my hand (bottom) is honeybee, the pollinator bushes interspersed in the aurora rows (aurora is above it, larger leaves)

it's easy to identify the honeybee cultivar with the smaller leaves and fruit. honeybee fruit still tastes great, so you can mix them together when you pick, in fact if you grow several kinds that's a good way to do it...

aurora haskaps at a local upick @riverbendorchards , my morning was picking about a gallon of them along with some gooseberries

the hedge rows are just solid runs loaded with fruit, an enjoyable experience to pick. if you're growing these at home you can plant them as individual bushes, and in good soil and full sun they'll get this big, note you...

hinnomaki red

collected some today at a local upick @riverbendorchards the bushes have a low growing form compared to other sprawling gooseberries, and they're characteristically quite thorny - but it goes along with them being loaded...

pink champaign currants, starting to ripen this week heading into mid july

pink currants are a variation of the...

northern gooseberry, Ribes hirtellum collected a few years ago from a farmyard in SK and now growing in the nursery

It's a native gooseberry species with few thorns. This handful of cuttings are at thirty days under mist in the greenhouse and stuck with a strong iba talc, a heavy rooting response - native Ribes seem...

red lake currants with heavy rooting after just over three weeks

these had some bottom heat for the last week, I have a few heat mats and move things around, it's tricky to bottom heat whole benches and still have good drainage, and most softwood doesn't need it, in fact it can be...

a native currant with crazy fruit, Ribes gladulosum aka skunk currant - heavy rooting on these cutting after 30 days

even up the stems and out of the pots, that's a strong rooting response. the native currants are just tough, the grow vigorously and in a heat wave when cultivars start to show signs of stress in their leaves. the native...

wild saskatoons finally ripe, for the next couple weeks the bushes all around our place have these tastey purple berries

they're smaller than cultivar ones, but they flower and ripen on a slightly different schedule and they have the most flavour. I'll collect a pail for seed extraction (and jam) and we'll have stock to grow in the nursery...

gooseberries starting to ripen

these ones are on our purple gooseberry bush, a generic name...

missouri giant, clove currant

Ribes odoratum. super tastey fruit, it's up there with crandall. this one is a new addition to our collection, and we'll start to propagate them next year. I might even collect...

pink champaign currants, still unripe they'll darken to a deep rosy pink

super sweet and tastey, if you find black currants don't suite your...

Ribes glandulosum, a favorite native currant with edible and armed fruit

they have a low sprawling shape to the bushes, the leaves and fruit are interesting, a good addition to a native plant garden. these were collected from wild stands and I'm growing out another ascension from seed from...

gooseberries sizing up, they'll be purple when ripe

this vigorous bush is an unknown cultivar, collected from our old farm and I just call it purple gooseberry. it seems to thrive on...

wild saskatoons are ripening, earlier than them cultivar ones at our neighbours which were still green this week

next to these bushes I've grafted apples onto the top and those photos are in this set. it's kind of cool to consider the rootstock...

white transparent, an old french cultivar from the 1800s, the seeds are just right there

sweet tasting. one of the new plants in our Ribes collection this year, should be able to...

red elderberry, stratified a couple of months

the small seedling elderberry leaves have a different shape than...

elderberry fruit, will be red or black by the fall

this is a seedling species unknown, but I'm watching out for selections of any black fruiting ones growing well in Manitoba. here we have amerian black elderberry (S. canadensis) - the usual suspects with a dozen...

purple gooseberry

unknown cultivar, the original bush is at least 30 years old and thriving in full shade. the one in this photo is a few years old, it's crazy vigorous. after a hard prune it flushed out with a heavy crop of fruit and...

ten seconds of mist over some currants and plums

mist propagation, one of my favorite things

cuttings stay alive for a couple of months, the mist goes off for just ten seconds every 10-20 minutes over these benches. the fastest to root, maybe the currants can be just a couple weeks. I run this from june 7 - aug...

potting some elderberry, hardwood set on heat mats in the root cellar, so damp and even temps

this set rooted in 2 weeks, the rest are about 50/50 so maybe another week. rooting grapes in the same way this year, pots of well draining mix, 8000ppm ima talc and bottom heat. after potting, the elderberry are a bit...

yellow silver buffaloberry

I filled half a brown shopping bag this morning, maybe ten pounds. easier to pick than sea buckthorn the fruit falls off intact and can get pulled off in small bunches. in the second video you can see a sport, one branch...

sea buckthorn, collected from two sources

the smaller one on the right is more of a shelterbelt seedling, one on the left is larger and nearly thornless, I was actually able to strip the fruit from the branches. cultivar unknown. I'll have both...

alpine wild strawberry in pots, started last year from seed

currants from cuttings this spring, I have a fun selection of new ones that will be large enough to propagate in 2026

this process of collecting material, rooting in and establishing a stock bed is ongoing. Some of these cultivars are going to take research...

silver buffaloberry, perfectly ripe this week

Ribes cynobari, divaricatum, glandulosum seedlings from the usda

native currants and gooseberries from a very small seed this spring, taking off in these six inch pots, now into stock beds. next june we'll be able to...

Ribes americanum, the wild american black currant

near the end of the season, but found enough fruit for seed to grow next year. they grow prolifically in this wet marshy area, and I found one patch that was doing great in full shade. you can see in the last photo that...

boyne raspberries, it's a Canadian introduction and ripens early

These rows were super healthy, the new canes were taller than me, they're managed with some pruning for height in the fall when the older canes are removed. I'll get into growing...

aronia fruit starting to ripen, these are chokeberries - the cultivar is viking

largest clove currant I've come across, this bush is quite old and has large fruit, not sure if it's a crandall seedling

highbush cranberry can root from softwood cuttings, these ones at 35 days have some decent rooting

it's a bit sensitive to even misting because the cuttings are large, I try and take them with 3 nodes. about half rooted, but that was more set I think, some dried out, other pots had 100%. A tricky plant...

crandall currant, finally got this one to root

third year attempting it, you need vigorous cuttings good drainage and double strength IBA compared to other currants. treat like a stubborn gooseberry I guess. Crandall is this exceptional clove currant with large fruit...

red currant, Ribes rubrum

collected some fruit from this seedling bush. red lake is slightly larger across the yard, this bush was planted by birds. the parent bush is still going at 23...

H

sinensis grafted to Hippophae rhamnoides, so it's a larger later ripening sea buckthorn species, female and full of...

alpine currant, cool parking lot find

for someone with a Ribes collection it's cool to see the mature bushes. it's a european species, these ones are about as large as they get. the leaves are distinct with the tight lobes, and it's...

altaiskaya sea buckthorn, double flowering plum

the sea buckthorn were collected june 25, so a decent rooting response at around 3 weeks. double flowering plum is a nice surprise, this is the 3rd year I've tried to root it and with some tweaks to the settings it...

trying out this machine for extracting pulp from berries and separating the seeds

worked great on a first run, about 3/4 of the saskatoons are pre-processed into a jelly that you could basically use on toast as is, I'll make up some jars and add a few things, minimal sugar, and run them through the...

collection of wild Ribes from seed are doing well, this is plant followed by it's tag

yah the tags are temporary. collecting this germplasm is one step on the way to propagating these, and eventually using them for our own seed source, or breeding work. all of these species are super cold hardy and...

sea buckthorn rooted at three weeks, this is about the stage where they can get potted up

these are on bottom heat, mist every 20 mins through the day, and an iba/naa mix with some fungicide, a recipe that's working better than anything else I've tried. but by far the easiest way to propagate these is the dig...

thiessen saskatoons from a local upick, super productive I picked two gallons in an hour this morning

wild raspberry season starting

they grow all around our place without any kind of maintenance, covering the ground. the fruit can be large, not as intensely productive as cultivars but they make up for by growing everywhere along trails and in...

potting up seedlings, natives like silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea), wolf willow (Elaeagnus commutata), a

collection of currants and gooseberries. experimenting with container nursery, most of the plants are in pots and plug trays for this year.. last year I would have them all in the ground, but I think for some species a...

currants at 3 weeks can be heavily rooted so time to move them into individual pots

these stay under mist and partial shade for about a week and will get slowly hardened off. too hot, sunny or dry too fast at this stage and you get crispy leaves. with some luck and a bit of fertilizer they'll resume top...

sea buckthorn softwood starting to callous after 10 days

I found an aqueous iba + naa mix works particularly good for these, AB testing last year had far for roots on our in house...

saskatoons are in season, Amelanchier alnifolia

in Manitoba they ripen at the start of july. we have wild ones around our place, seems like a good year for them...

wild raspberry, we have these all around our place and they're just prolific

they ripen over about a month so you can pick all the fruit and come back in a month and there's just as much again. I had one small stem that was falling over to the ground with dozens of large raspberries...

currants resuming growth, potted up a few weeks ago and taking off

I feel like my whole softwood process uses currants as a baseline. they have 6 more weeks to grow before we start...

Ribes glandulosum, skunk currant

not all that skunky, native, awesome...

Jostine, a cultivar of jostaberry which is this cool currant-gooseberry hybrid

gets me super interested in hybrid Ribes crosses. Jostine rooted enough to pot up, not quite as heavily as some of the Ribes nigrum and rubrum (black and red currants) but it's fast growing so I...

Ribes glandulosum, skunk currant has a cool spikey glandular fruit, but smooth stems without and bristles or thorns

because it's a currant. less bristly than the prickly gooseberry, but similar crazy dangerous sea urchin look to the fruit. has a slightly skunky scent if you hold the leaves right to your nose, and...

Ribes lacustre, bristly black currant, or maybe a better name is the prickly gooseberry

it's actually a gooseberry. native species with...

seems these leaves aren't abaxially pubescent

(fuzzy/hairy under the leaves), and when you crush them they aren't skunky.. there's a few indicators that it's Ribes americanum. but the flowers is more like the other one. a hybrid? takes a bit to grow out specimens...

native gooseberry in my collection, this is Ribes hirtellum (Smooth Gooseberry) it has very few spines, just one or two

at the internodes, easy to miss. now that it's fruited and I'm confident with the ID I'll be starting to propagate them and should have some limited numbers...

gooseberry growing in the boughs of this spruce tree

100% shade, growing great lots...

elderberry growing in zone 3

this was my second winter with them, and even with a good snow cover all of the top growth wasn't alive in the spring, but maybe it's fine they easily regen from the roots. now that I know, will just plan to crop them...

one plant for this species, Ribes lacustre the Prickly currant

From a collection of just 5 tiny seeds provided by the usda. super fragile, keep it alive or lose the species from our collection. hoping to establish stock plants representing all of our native Ribes, the...

seeds from the usda National Clonal Germplasm Repository (COR), approved my request for a few native currant

and gooseberry species, thankful because I'm building a collection and some are hard to find, and even then takes time to grow them out and ID. these are from carefully documented sources in their gene bank essentially...

alpine strawberry

started some from seed this spring, I think they’re big enough to include in my sale next month...

had to check, 3g is about the largest currant I’ve ever seen

many of the largest berries from this clove currant bush are the...

collected some large clove currants yesterday, the bush was fifteen years old

might be crandall, was very impressed...

collecting sea buckthorn, these tree were loaded

a bit over ripe but perfect for seed. Likely the iPFRA seed strain...

yellow silver buffaloberry growing in our old hayfield

they’re a bit like sea buckthorn. I pick them with gloves and just let them drop into a box, you kind of just knock...

ribes odoratum, ribes rubrum

old bushes I planted in 2001. collecting a bag of...

some late hanging berries, pink champaign currant, ben connan currant, poorman gooseberry

purple gooseberry fruiting in it’s second year

unknown cultivar, tough plant that does well...

red currant taking off after potting up

this is a good result, these will be large enough to send out as a one year plant, I may even need to pot them up because currants can quickly grow a large root system. part of the challenge with rooting softwood is...

ben sarek and ben conan black currants ripe this week

ribes odoratum, the golden current and this is the black fruited variety

full of fruit this year. I think the difference between R. aureum and R. odoratum is the...

canadian gooseberry, Ribes oxyacanthoides

stems full of fuzzy thorns. This plant set fruit last summer and there’s a tray of it’s seedlings growing, also trying some softwood. native species are great, I want to...

I like to collect wild currants and gooseberries

This one is one is our native Ribes hirtellum or swamp gooseberry. The new stems are smooth with small sparse spines just at the nodes, and the leaf...

Wax currant, Ribes cereum - does it grow in zone 3

there’s a few observations on inat in northern montanaz Google the cold hardiness zone and the results are not reliable, often variable. I’ll know for sure after a couple of winters, but if anyone else living somewhere...

highbush cranberry, Viburnum trilobum at six weeks into rooting

I checked them for roots a few weeks ago, and in this batch about half were good and were potted up and the rest needed more time. Many plants root like this. Six weeks in the full batch rooted. On other years when I...

Chuyskaya sea buckthorn, a nearly thornless Russian variety

The softwood roots quickly, and they also spread with rhizomes and sucker, given a large bush the later might be the easiest way to propagate them. I did...

wild raspberry season starting, we have acres of these, they’re most productive when they get some sun

black currants on this bush are just about ripe

first ripe raspberry of the season is the best one ;)

highbush cranberry roots in about a month, that’s the easy part

trying a few things with these this year, like keeping them in pots and phosphorus fertilizer, the last couple of years only half over wintered. these guys and sour cherry I...

red elderberry ripening this week

I’ve met two people now at farmers markets who...

black currants are fast and heavy rooting with softwood, here are well rooted cuttings of Tiben at 21 days

So this week I’m going through all the currants and checking them, anything at this stage can get potted up and then moved to a less frequent misting zone to begin hardening off. With that setup, I’ve also put them in...

red elderberry had a stronger rooting response with a quick dip in captan before sticking

100% of the treated cuttings rooted in 21 days. 4000ppm iba talc / stimroot 2 powder, and the fungicide was a solution 1 tsp/ liter . The reference manual for woody plant propagation recommends this. Probably applies to...

bob gordon elderberry in it’s second year, I cut it flush to the ground in the fall

Black elderberry is kinda rare around here, and this may be the best cultivar for zone 3 if you want...

gooseberry growing fully under this spruce and into the lower boughs

full shade, decent set of fruit. this bush is at least 25 yrs old, I just...

What cultivar is this

I planted it in 2002, it was available at a big box store garden center. It produces a decent crop of black currants, they’re small and kinda sour. I thought it was Consort, a hybrid that was common at the time. That how...

goji berry is early to start setting fruit right along with the haskaps and currants, these plants have flowers, green

and ripe red fruit all at the same time continually through...

goji berry rooted using two different rooting hormones, on the right using an iba+naa liquid solution was a much better

result than the usual iba talc...

Ok we might have the Id, here’a a leaf next to crandall, an old ribes aureum selection

The fruit is completely unlike crandall, and I always thought R. aureum had red/black/yellow fruit colors, this...

red currant aphids or currant blister aphids make these galls, I removed the leaves as a precaution but otherwise

the bush is quite healthy. I enjoyed this reference that encourages you not to spray insecticides for these relatively harmless guys because aphids are an important part of the food web and it’s ok to have some in...

highbush cranberries are ripe

collecting seed for our nursery and also growing cuttings from these...

collected goji berries today, so cool how they ripen all summer

I have rooted cuttings from this bush, they’re tasty and large, probably...

cleaning wild raspberry seed

I process them in a modified blender and then decant until clean, the seeds will sink and the rest floats, works well for...

wild black currant, american black currant id from minnesota wildflowers

at first I couldn’t see the little leaf glands that are part of the identification, but they show up...

found some seedling currants along a trail, probably they escaped cultivation or could be a wild species

ripe fruit is tasty, reminds me of crandall. variable ripening and late, no musky smell, zone 3...

collecting red elderberry today

I keep bumping into people who like to cook with them, it’s weird how there’s...

silver buffaloberry, the red ones i’ve been picking for twenty years and the surprise yellow ones that showed up nearby

yellow is ripe and tastes...

trying out jewel black raspberry cuttings from the canes that just fruited

not sure if they’ll root, but they were going to get pruned this fall anyway. I didn’t want to use the new canes coming up, they still have a few ft to grow. Jewel grows quite a bit like a blackberry, where wyoming black...

first strawberry on this plant started from seed this spring

raspberry seeds just hanging out of the sun dried fruit, the heat wave here has been drying out everything

jewel black raspberry in its 3rd year

I set some logs on the vines every winter to keep them below the snow, seems enough to keep it alive, the thermometer in our orchard is a few ft away and hits -35...

collected some black currants yesterday, happy to find these

They’re overripe but its good because while I’ll eat a few they’re mostly for seeds. Bush was a large seven year old ben...

alpine currant from semi-hardwood cuttings at about three weeks

the fruit are cool range of red and yellow color similar to clove currant...

highbush cranberries starting to ripen, in a couple weeks they’ll be bright red #highbushcranberry

a chokeberry bush I’ve been propagating and collecting seed from

last photo is seedlings growing from dropped...

goji berries, I think

this black berry vine was laid down and covered with a log and a good snow pack over the winter to push its zone,

and we were lucky enough to have some fruit this...

White pearl currants, pink Champaign currants

Both are perfectly ripe this...

trying to figure out if this is a cut leaf elderberry or a European red elderberry, or some other cultivar

It was a volunteer and grows like mad, a six inch plant this spring is six feet tall and three feet wide outgrowing the...

first harvest, enough rhubarb for a couple pies and a mix currant leaves for tea #rhubarb #blackcurranttea

prepared black currant cuttings for mist propagation in our greenhouse

These are from a consort currant bush I planted twenty years ago, because it’s old and large there’s all kinds of new vigorous growth for cuttings. From this step they’re dipped in rooting...

three new cultivars of black currants from dormant hardwood cuttings - growing indoors at 2 weeks from sticking

We also put some in an outdoor bed in May, and held back half just in case. I recommend doing this with a limited resource. These cuttings it turns out are doing better, I think it’s because of the consistent...

Ribes aureum - clove currant, golden current

I enjoy Crandall so hoping some of these are similar. Trying to collect all the...

highbush cranberries require patience to grow from seed - collected a bag today but they’ll need a long warm

stratification that begins next spring, so the seed planted this fall will wait until spring of 2023 to...

wild high bush cranberry softwood at 28 days under mist #propagation #backyardnursery

some late hanging saskatoons near end of their season, which runs end of June to late July here on the Canadian prairies

Wild cranberry, viburnum sp

flowering today. Thinking about propagating. #cranberry...