Birds’ favorite, juneberry now ripening, following honeyberry/haskap, goumi, and Nanking cherry. First Carmen Jewel bush cherries also ripe today, but unlike juneberry, CJ blossoms were decimated by frost resulting in a much smaller crop than juneberry. Most persimmon blossoms opening now, slightly ahead of most black elderberry blossoms:

Nanking cherry seems to struggle in dense soils with limited water. These are not ideal conditions for most fruit trees or shrubs but few if any seem to struggle more than Nanking cherry. Other fruit trees and bushes seem to easily (or otherwise marginally) outgrow and often outproduce Nanking cherry in less than ideal soil… Continue reading Nanking Cherry

Black elderberry and persimmon, the last fruits to bloom, along with brambles. Nice for pollinators and people alike to have masses of bright beautiful fragrant fruit blossoms months after the blooms of the earliest perennial fruits. Honeyberry/haskap and goumi the first fruits to ripen (along with strawberry and Nanking cherry and soon juneberry). New England’s… Continue reading Early Fruit and Late Blooms

This past week cedar waxwings have displaced robins and other songbirds as the main consumers of goumi berries for the first year ever. Why this year? Why not before? I wonder. Other perennial fruit trees, shrubs, vines, canes continue to develop. Goumi, black elderberry, hardy lemon: American & Asian persimmon blooms, and early fruitlet:

Stages of ripening and blooming mid-May – 16 species of edible fruit, per detail of stages of bloom and fruit set. Goumi, Quince, Asian Pear: Peach, apple, hardy lemon, black elderberry, Nanking bush cherry: Nanking bush cherry, Asian plum, European plum: Beach plum: Saw-tooth blackberry and male persimmon blossoms, which set mainly in clusters of… Continue reading Goumi, Quince, Asian Pear…

With pollination from a genetically different pawpaw tree, multiple fruit may set from a single flower, up to 9 reportedly. I’ve seen as many as eight. These hands below are thinned to 2, 3, and 4 fingers of pawpaws to improve the size of the fruit and to perhaps lessen the fruit weight on the… Continue reading Pawpaw

Juneberry is a pome fruit more closely related to apples and pears than to blueberries, though it is very much the same size and shape with often a similar color and flavor as blueberry. Unlike apple and pear seeds, the small soft juneberry seeds are eaten whole with the fruit, causing the nutty almond-like blueberry… Continue reading Juneberry

Sometimes honeyberry and haskap are used interchangeably to refer to edible blue honeysuckle. Often, haskap refers to later ripening and larger blue honeysuckle berries, typically containing more Japanese genetics. Meanwhile, honeyberry often refers to earlier ripening and smaller blue honeysuckle berries, typically containing more Russian genetics. Below is one of the smaller honeyberries, either Tundra… Continue reading Honeyberry and Haskap – The Difference?

Early May, 2024. At this point, this year, in northcentral WV, haskap fruit are ripe, along with the very earliest goumi fruits that the robins have begun to pluck from the bushes, mostly ignoring the haskap. As for (arguably, I suppose) the two premier native fruits of the Appalachian region and the continent, pawpaw and… Continue reading Peach, Persimmon, Haskap, Pear – Early Stages

More photos from the final day of April: hardy lemon and haskap, black elderberry and Asian fir with purple cones.