Hardy Berries and Currants: Fall Field Notes

sinensis sea buckthorn, wow they ripen and hang late and taste excellent off the tree even in early winter. sweet and tart like frozen orange popsicle

nannyberry can hang late going into fall. they're like raisons, but I still like to eat them off the tree, around the large flat seed they have the most unique woody flavour. filled all of my pockets for seed.

alpine strawberries fruiting into october. small and tasty fruit on these. we have a few left in our fall sale, they're two years old from seed.

Canadian gooseberry grown from seed, Ribes oxyacanthoides. These seedlings got to a decent size in small pots this year. They’re going into a bed as mother plants for next year. super spiney stems, I love it. #gooseberry #propagation

black wellington currant. they get this size one year in the ground, p+1 so calling it 2 yr old plant. super aromatic leaves. #bareroot

nannyberry, just ripe now. tastes like raisons with a hint of woodiness.

grafting sea buckthorn is tricky, but possible. Here’s a fruiting branch grafted last spring from chinese sea buckthorn, H. sinensis onto a male H. rhamnoides , probably Indian Summer a shelterbelt seed strain. Sinesis gets larger, fruits a month later, and has a sharp citrus tasty flavour.

alpine strawberry can have this cool elongated shape. fun to see the seedlings fruiting, I started these around the end of april in the greenhouse.

highbush cranberry, fully ripe and they will hang around for a while. the seeds need a long warm stratification, almost six months at room temperature so starting the now is helpful to get plants growing in the spring.

anyone know what these are? seeds are like a rugulose stone fruit, weird seeds, not barberry. super sour, like an intense cranberry. zone 3 hardy, grows in long canes.

these are jahn’s prairie, a gooseberry selection but not the usual species, it’s Ribes oxyacanthoides our native Canadian Gooseberry. Only have a few this year so will probably just put them in with the stock plants. next year. #nativeplants

this is why I get excited about gooseberries. Black velvet is a hybrid between the common European gooseberry and Worcesterberry. The range of interesting species in some cultivars is so cool, not to mention the history, the different leaves, flowers, growth habbits, falvours in Ribes makes them fun to collect.

nannyberry starting to ripen, they’ll turn blue this month and taste delicious off the tree. these are a native shrub in the viburnum genus, related to highbush cranberry. they set fruit in the same way, you might think it was cranberry but it ripens a month later.. and while cranberry is very tart and better to cook with, nannyberry is great fresh, sweet just with a large seed, tastes more like a saskatoon mixed with something else. when they’re super ripe they can hang late and taste like raisons. I’ll be trying to collect more seed this fall, like other viburnum they need a long time to stratify, seed started in the spring will germinate the following year.

a large sea buckthorn, not sure which species - much larger than Hippophae rhamnoides, also later ripening. Could be Chinese sea buckthorn Hippophae sinensis, but a friend with an orchard says his ripen end of Sept. Large fruit, a bit sparse this year, tasty like orange citrus with some strange medicinal flavour.

collecting some late hanging #nannyberry … even though these are overripe they taste good, sweet with a woody grape taste and just a small amount of fruit around each seed.

this **cotoneaster had unusual fruiting that hugged the stems in long strings, large fruit and more productive than the other bushes. **edited, originally thought it was aronia

barberry, a shrub covered in these racemes of bright red edible fruit.

nannyberry tree late hanging with over ripe fruit #nannyberry

highbush cranberry seeds drying. they’re so pink

silver buffaloberry still full of fruit, they’re just as good a month after ripening

bunch berries .. edible, with a gummy texture that clings to the seed. (Cornus canadensis) basically trail side gummy snacks. #berries #wildberries #foodforest #foraging #bunchberry

fairy bells .. like fuzzy marshmallows and edible. (Prosartes trachycarpa) Found a few of these along side the bunch berries on a hiking trail at #ridingmountainnationalpark .. #foraging #wildberries #fairybells