i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Muscovies have a reputation for being difficult to incubate and hatch, but because the eggs I have are fertile (thanks to my very enthusiastic male), I decided to try my hand at them. It takes on average 35-37 days for them to hatch. A few …
Haskaps, or Honeyberry, or Edible Honeysuckle (lonicera caerulea) is part of the honeysuckle family (and not all honeysuckles are edible) that produces fruit very similar to blueberries. It’s cold hardy as hell (some are hardy all the way to zone 2!) and unlike blueberries, tolerate …
I was always curious about the taste of gooseberries (ribes uva-crispa syn. ribes grossularia) but had never had the opportunity to try one. It seem financially irresponsible to buy a pie or a jar of jam of something that I wasn’t sure I’d like (and consequently have it go to waste.) Given that I have never seen it at any of the barbecues I have gone to over the years, I could only surmise it is not terribly popular as a fruit.
But I am experimental by nature, and in my journey to turning my backyard into an edible forest, would of course, come across gooseberries as a good choice. I already bought currants and found that it is very hardy where I am, and gooseberries are a closely related genus (close enough to cross breed into “jostaberries”) so I also bought a couple bushes.
Boy, am I glad I did. I wasn’t expecting much by way of fresh eating as since the currants, while labeled “good” for eating off the bush, were too tart and astringent to fully enjoy raw and served better in jams, the gooseberry cultivar I got, Hinnomaki Red, is deliciously sweet. The skin is a little thick (but I suspect all ribes species are) but quite good all the same.
It is hardy to zone 7 (and even colder) and fine with most types of soil. Sun or shade, it will live (although I think sun would sweeten the berries more), and survives transplants (as I had moved these poor things around several times trying to find the perfect spot for them) quite well. It’s drought tolerant, but does love a good watering.
This is the first year it has bore fruit for me, as the previous years it was trying it’s darndest to survive being uprooted and placed in new spots. I am expecting it to be quite productive in the coming years given the amount it grew this year (just a handful.)
I have another cultivar, Hinnomaki Yellow, but it has not produced yet and is still much smaller than these. Hopefully it will catch up soon!
I plant beans every year, and have tried several different types including scarlet runner, snap peas, etc. I found though, that I like bush beans the best as far as taste and utility goes. The bush bean that I have (phaseolus vulgaris) is actually just …
I bought two different types of peppercorn trees (no relation to black pepper) this year: The Sansho peppercorn (zanthoxylum piperitum) and the Szechuan peppercorn (zanthoxylum simulans) for my food forest. The sansho peppercorn is the main flavor you would find in Togarashi Ichimi-Shichimi powder, the …
It was so hard to come up with a pun for asparagus–you know, one that might be family friendly rather than raunchy, but I managed to do so after sleeping on it overnight.
Asparagus officinalis (see, even they couldn’t come up with a better name) is a perennial (and how! well taken care of, some even boasting 20 years!) spring vegetable that’s harvested for it’s fleshy shoots. In the spring, it really does look like alien fingers popping up from the soil. A quick snap at the base produces (at least for me), shoots as thick as my thumb. This is the 4th year I’ve had these particular plants, which is why mine come up very big and hearty.
They are heavy feeders so I always compost them and lay mulch over them. Every year I add more on top, the weight helping them thicken up as well. They require full sun and good, deep watering (but no standing water or else their funny, squid-like roots rot), and to be left unharvested after the first 3 weeks of spring so that they’re not depleted from us eating the tops.
One thing I don’t like is that they get top heavy and fall over, so they aren’t terribly attractive once they leaf out (nor tasty as they become woody and stringy). The fronds look and feel like those of fennel or dill.
If you are to buy asparagus crowns (the easiest way to ensure you have a viable crop soon), try buying males as they are thicker and supposedly more productive. Occasionally a female does sneak in, as I realized this year because one of them berried! No matter, I’ll just plant the seeds and get more asparagus plants.
I do love asparagus sauteed or grilled, even though it makes my pee smell funny. When they are in season (in my backyard), we have it with eggs for breakfast. It’s a relatively low maintenance plant once established, and quite useful as a backdrop to other shorter vegetables and herbs.
Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) has been somewhat of a bane to me–I love it. I want it. But in previous years, I had no luck with it until the one I planted last fall took. I don’t know how it’s possible to do so poorly …
I tried to come up with a clever pun for the title of this post, but failed miserably. It’s sad because this is such an awesome plant that I managed to get a hold of here in the United States. Japanese Spikenard (Aralia Cordata), also …
Raspberries (rubus idaeus) belong to the rubus family which includes blackberries, thimbleberries, brambleberries, tayberries, etc. and can readily cross breed with them, so new varieties are constantly coming out. Some people find them invasive–but honestly, what’s so bad about a fruit that vigorously propagates itself? I don’t know anyone who might go, I have too many raspberries. I suppose, if one prefers everything to be in nice, neat rows, then one might find the running nature of raspberries to be uncontrollable. But I like them, rooting here and there until it forms a thicket that deters the deer that tend to sample my garden, and provides a cover for my ducks if a predator so happens to be near by.
They can be a bit prickly, but they are lovely–and I’m not the only one who thinks so–ants seem to love getting to ones that are close to the ground.
I mulch my plants heavily so most of the time they don’t have an issue with lack of watering, but raspberries in general love well drained soil, regardless if it’s sandy or not. They tolerate drought well, and do fine in part shade where mine are. They’re very winter hardy, although some of the canes did die, the plant itself survived and came back even more vigorously than last year.
Some people recommend pruning the canes (for fruit growing on branches of the main cane are said to be inferior to new canes), but I don’t bother and still get a decent crop from them. It’s honestly not a big deal to me as I don’t mind rummaging in them (even if they are a bit pointy) to hunt for the berries. However, do what makes you comfortable, and you should always follow an expert’s advice over an insane lady with enough time on her hands to experiment.
They tiproot as well as sent up volunteers, so propagating does not seem like it will be an issue for me. I actually want to move some to line the very back of the property, forming a thorny fence to prevent the deer from easily coming in next year, but I’ll wait until these new ones get a bit bigger.
I have yellow, black, and red varieties because I love the rainbow of colors they give. My red ones seem to be the first to ripen, but the others will soon follow.
I hate ornamentals that have no utility other than looking pretty. I’m sorry, but in the event of the zombie apocalypse, everything on my property better have a use so that myself and my family can survive, and tulips and daffodils definitely won’t help on …