Hardy Berries and Currants: Spring Field Notes

wild american black currant, super tasty native currant. I collect the seeds every year from one local population I've found with good tasting fruit, similar to crandall just smaller and they ripen unevenly which looks good, you get black red yellow and green fruit all at once

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 the right set of cultivars for cross pollination, I would just get a variety.

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 see if it the nursery but the conditions could be made better, tonnes of water and fertility and zero grass in this new spot.

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 help from the whole family in our spring packing rush

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 species. #ribes #nativeplants

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, you can help ID the plant by the small yellow glands under the leaves. I want to plant them all over our property. Here i'm making plugs with small clusters, excited to get these growing. #nativeplants

ribes aureum, golden currant. lobed leaves, variable colored fruit. these are flowering for the first time at three years from seed.

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, inaturalist observations very limited.

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 warms up #whitecurrants

a couple of weeks from breaking dormancy this year old white current decided to bloom super quickly under the grow lights. green flowers are so cool

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 strategy. I plan to keep these in pots until they get trimmed for softwood cuttings in a few weeks. this propagation method is an exciting way to garden over winter, and start the season with new cultivars just from hardwood received in the mail. #propagation

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 2. room temperature 3. deep pots of loose medium high in perlite 4. bagged tops with poly or opaque plastic grocery bag, to retain humidity while the top leafs out ahead of the roots. 5. 4000ppm iba talc 6. moisture is key, medium should be just minimal damp. in every case where medium was too damp, the cutting cambium would die and sometimes roots formed at the high humidity area above the medium. conclusion: my setups were initially too hot and wet. take this photo as an example, no bottom heat, no hormone, no watering, just trapped humidity. #propagation

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 freezing at night they’re unaffected.

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 getting my legs with hardwood #propagation

wow this currant has some nice roots after just ten days. I like the heavy rooting cultivars, this one is boskoop giant .. #propagation

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 seedy saturday Regina tomorrow!

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 compatibility here. #grafting

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 #seabuckthorn #seaberry

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, once it’s off if there’s any sign of drooping it gets misted and back in the bag. Btw you can do the same with mist propagation, if your cuttings begin to wilt just put them back in the mist and they’ll usually recover and become turgid again. last photo is rooted elderberry growing fast. #propagation

Lilac and currants are first to leaf out in our raised beds. These were softwood propagated under mist last summer. #propagation #gardening #horticulture #plants

elderberry budding out? this was under the snow last week, what a hardy plant #elderberry