Hardy Berries and Currants: Summer Field Notes

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 to root fast and heavily, maybe there's selection pressure for it.

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 detrimental if your mist doesn't run for any reason. for anything that needs more than four weeks to root, bottom heat is a good addition. here I have several clumps of rooted cuttings about a dozen to each small pot, the spacing is fine to get them to start and then I carefully pull them apart and pot up into a better mix with far less perlite. this explodes the space required, and takes some planning. this year I may need to expand the shaded zone where these are hardened off for a week to solve a traffic jam.

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 ones are always the healthiest looking. this set of cuttings is a mix of local plants found along a lakeside, and seeds the usda sent last winter, I have them in two plots as accessions. this process I've been following, to collect the plants by seeds or cuttings. get them growing in a carefully labelled place in the nursery, and then once per year in june collect the new shoots to make more, it's a fun ongoing effort to build a germplasm, a collection of genetics to grow and preserve, and one day to try some breeding work with. aspirationally, a hybrid between these fruit and a larger cultivar would make a very cool looking fruit. are there any glandulosum hybrids out there? kind of want to make some. did you know that black velvet, one of our fastest growing gooseberries is a cross with the Worcesterberry (Ribes divaricatum). interesting Ribes hybrids are possible, in fact many of them do have some tangled mix of hybridization. Jostaberry is another good example.

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 next year and keep our seed shop supplied. native in Manitoba, no one planted these and they're common around the forest margins here, with chokecherry, wild raspberry and beaked hazel. i think cold hardy to zone 2 (we get some -40 here every winter), saskatoon (amelanchier alnifolia) never have any winter injury.

gooseberries starting to ripen. these ones are on our purple gooseberry bush, a generic name for an unknown cultivar

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 some of the fruit to grow out a set of seedlings next summer.

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 palette, these are like candy

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 the usda. it's called skunk currant but I haven't found the reason, sometimes common names are poorly chosen. glandulosum is better, describing the cool glands on stalks all over the fruit.

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 neglect, and it's loaded with fruit this year.

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 for those apples grows tastey purple berries.

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 take some cuttings next summer.

red elderberry, stratified a couple of months. the small seedling elderberry leaves have a different shape than the mature compound ones.

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 cultivars, some of which may be zone 3 hardy in the right context. To date, I haven't got any to survive above the snow but I'm in an exposed low laying area with light soil. and then there's the reclusive rocky mountain elderberry (S. racemesa var melanocarpa) - a black "red" elderberry - would like to find some of that growing it may be our hardiest option

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 large shoots for cuttings. gooseberry needs a stronger rooting hormone and more time than currants, here I'm using 8000ppm iba talc and I expect them to need 6-8 weeks to root. for comparison, established hinnomaki red has about 2" of shoot extension, I'll collect cuttings for the other gooseberries early next week.

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 7, the slowest are the sour cherries and gooseberries. still taking cuttings, the benches are going to be packed full this year.

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 droopy so set them under timed mist for a while. everyone starts hardwood cuttings a bit different, the easy method is stick in the ground. well this works only if you have the right climate and local environment, and soil. could I just set them in pots outside, maybe but even in a cool cellar they're sending up top growth without roots, so it would have to be very early in the year. elderberry is very borderline in zone 3, still looking for the most cold hardy ones.

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 that reverted to red. seed from the yellow fruit will produce some percentage both yellow and red fruited trees.

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 on our seed shop soon, still sorting out what to call the larger one.

silver buffalo berries.

alpine wild strawberry in pots, started last year from seed. small fruit good flavour

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 to dig up their origins, Onyx is a good example.

silver buffaloberry, perfectly ripe this week. we have red and yellow ones to pick

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 take softwood cuttings. woop going to collect them all!

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 all three stages of ripeness green to red and fully ripe black can be on one raceme. I suspect the wildlife has been eating them as the ripen. #nativeplants

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 raspberries eventually, for now we collected some for seed.

poorman gooseberry

aronia fruit starting to ripen, chokeberry.

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

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 to root or grow from seed, trying some of both this year. #propagation

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 and doesn't taste like black currant, mild to no astringency, good flavour. What's crazy is it doesn't taste like other clove currants, Ribes odoratum typically has fruit half the size with a different flavour, they're more sour, better for jam. Crandall is good off the bush. Of particular interest to me is the population of wild Ribes americanum I found that have a similar flavour. I'm growing our seedlings of each this summer, and now I can get a stock bed of crandall growing in a better location, the parent plant is in full shade, you want them in full sun to get the most growth.

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 years old without any pruning. currants are kinda tough.

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

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 dioecious so rare to find any fruit in cultivation where most are male.

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 rooted heavily. I have a bush I planted in 2004 to take cuttings from, it's a low spreading bush, attractive flowers.

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 canner. this process should let me de-seed berries and make just about full use of them for preserves and since the seeds are fully intact, not cooked etc so in good shape to plant in the nursery.

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 resilient in our climate, produce edible fruit, and have unique characteristics. native currants and gooseberries are not easy to find from any Canadian nursery, maybe you can get one, but you want the whole collection right? something about spikey fruit is just cool.

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 up suckers from the roots and pot them, if you just need a few and you have the room. softwood is my preferred method, the only caution I would advise is to wait until the cuttings are this size and not overly succulent, and provide some shade and consistent mist, with good airflow, they can be sensitive to over watering or drying out.

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 disturbed areas, kind of an awesome plant. I collect them for seeds every year and make some jam.

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 pot works better.. and I can ship them in the fall, basically can't do that with bare root here on the Canadian prairies, when the leaves drop and it snows the next day. #backyardnursery

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 growth for the next couple of months. next up, cherry plums and haskaps. elderberry roots fast but it was the last cuttings I took. gooseberry is a mix, trying some bottom heat, generally 4-6 weeks for them. slowest cuttings take 8 weeks, after that in my opinion some variables were wrong, like timing / juvenility, hormone, temperature, fungi, too wet or dry.. there's probably more. helps to keep notes. #propagation

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 solution. should be rooted at 30-40 days.

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, some bushes are quite full of the fruit.

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. I collect these for seed (and jam) and will have them restocked soon.

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 getting frosts, then I'll sort out a fall sale.

Ribes glandulosum, skunk currant. not all that skunky, native, awesome spikey fruit

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 expect these will get up to a transplant ready size by fall #propagation

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 the fruit are probably an ok edible, if you like something unusual.

Ribes lacustre, bristly black currant, or maybe a better name is the prickly gooseberry. it's actually a gooseberry. native species with awesome spikey fruit

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 and get a confident ID. what I'm interested in here is the difference between american wild currant and northern black currant. oddly these ones have astringent fruit (more like R. hudsonianum), and my other source for R. americanum have awesome tasting fruit (reminds me of crandall). I like finding genetic variation in wild populations, it means you can make a good selection and clone it through softwood cuttings.

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 available in the fall. #nativeplants #nativegooseberry

gooseberry growing in the boughs of this spruce tree. 100% shade, growing great lots of fruit.

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 all for cuttings in the fall, which is totally fine for me. I'm also going to take softwood, so these poor bushes might not get very tall. anyone else growing elderberry where it's -40 in the winter?

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 genus for currants and gooseberries. #nativeplants #nativeplantnursery

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. excited for such a small seedling, in some cases this seed was over ten years old and I only have 5 of them to germinate. amazed to see germination rates quite good. I find a good place to do this is under the greenhouse bench, it stays humid and in the shade.

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

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 size of small grapes.

collected some large clove currants yesterday, the bush was fifteen years old. might be crandall, was very impressed with the flavour.

collecting sea buckthorn, these tree were loaded. a bit over ripe but perfect for seed. Likely the iPFRA seed strain Indian-Summer.#seabuckthorn

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 them off the branches. #silverbuffaloberry

ribes odoratum, ribes rubrum .. old bushes I planted in 2001. collecting a bag of each today for seed.

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 with some neglect

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 getting the cuttings to resume growth after rooting at a time of year when the daylight is reducing and plants are transitioning to hardening off. Starting them early helps, I’m also about to add supplemental light in the greenhouse in the evenings called “greenhouse forcing” to convince the plants that the day length is still more like June. If I rooted this currant in mid august, there’s a good chance it would not have grown any more until next year, a challenge for some species that affects winter survival. #propagation #redcurrants

ben sarek and ben conan black currants ripe this week. #blackcurrant

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 fruit color, and I’m growing both.

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 plant more of them around our property along walking trails.

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 stalks are hairy (hirtellum for hairy). #gooseberry

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 cold is growing less common Ribes let me know if this one is cold hardy. Red flowering currant is another one I’m trying, cultivar is twisp river.

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 took the cuttings later they didn’t root as quickly, the juvenility is important if you want a rooting response. next year I’ll make sure to try nannyberry, Viburnum lentagowhich is probably similar since it’s closely related #propagation

hinnomaki red #gooseberry

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 some of each this year. #seabuckthorn #propagation

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 struggle with if they just go right into a bed. #propagation

red elderberry ripening this week. I’ve met two people now at farmers markets who make jam from them.

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 the shade for a week and watering often, or on other year set them just outside of the mist in the greenhouse so they catch the edge of it. #propagation

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 black elderberry, now it’s on my list to AB test with anything that’s slow to root or has discoloured stems this year. Funny thing you can’t buy Captan in Canada any more, but it’s easy to find on ebay. #propagation #softwoodpropagation

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 to get fruit in our short season.

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 call it purple gooseberry

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 I label it, but I would like to be sure. Look at the leaves with the large dull teeth and deep lobes. fully zone 3 hardy, and at 22 yr old and never pruned it’s 6-8 ft tall.

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 the summer. #gojiberry

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. #propagation

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 one just turns jet black when it’s ripe.

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 your garden. https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/currant-blister-aphid

highbush cranberries are ripe. collecting seed for our nursery and also growing cuttings from these trees growing along our road.

collected goji berries today, so cool how they ripen all summer. I have rooted cuttings from this bush, they’re tasty and large, probably a cultivar but not sure.

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 most berries with small seeds. #seedsaving

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 with a macro photo. #ribesamericanum

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 welcome. id suggestions welcome #currants

collecting red elderberry today. I keep bumping into people who like to cook with them, it’s weird how there’s conflicting info about their edibility.

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 sweeter than red.

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 seems to grow more compact and bushy like a raspberry. maybe it’s because I have an older plant, or do all black raspberries grow long whippy floricanes?

snowberries

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 - -40C a dozen or more nights every winter #zonepushing

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 series in need of a good pruning. #seedsaving

alpine currant from semi-hardwood cuttings at about three weeks. the fruit are cool range of red and yellow color similar to clove currant, and taste good. #propagation

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 fruit. #chokeberry

Highbush cranberry softwood cuttings.

goji berries, I think. Seems like a mass of vines?

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 year #blackberries

White pearl currants, pink Champaign currants. Both are perfectly ripe this week. #currant

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 bed. i think the fruit is red. #elderberry

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 hormone and stuck in flats with a 50/50 mix of coarse perlite and peat.

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 environment, used rooting hormone and low to medium light, humidity dome, even some wax and parafilm out of caution. I wasn’t sure if they would need a temperature differential from top to roots like bottom heat or the cold night time air. Using a peat potting mix just slightly damp. We lost a few in the outside bed because the soil is heavier, although it’s working well for other cuttings like willow. So long as we get some to grow then we can softwood propagate. #propagation #currants

Ribes aureum - clove currant, golden current. I enjoy Crandall so hoping some of these are similar. Trying to collect all the Ribes that will grow here. #ribes

bunchberry

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 germinate. #cranberry #highbushcranberry

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 #saskatoonberries #serviceberry

Wild cranberry, viburnum sp. flowering today. Thinking about propagating. #cranberry #cranberries #blossom