Easier To Spot

Day 4: There are only about a dozen and a half kiwi berries left on the vine now, and with most of the leaves having fallen, they're easier to spot. All things considered, I've had a good harvest this year. Almost every day for the last two weeks, I've been able to snack on anything from 3-4 up to about 20, and all but one from the "Anna vine." With judicious pruning, I may be able to train branches of the male "Clark" into "Issai" in the hopes of better pollination. "Issai" made a single, significantly larger berry. The garden has been good to me this year, what with 32 figs, a ton of blueberries on the foot-tall "Jelly Bean" bush, so many raspberries that I've been inviting guests to eat them because the freezer is full, and of course enough gooseberries for a batch of jam. A chipmunk helped itself to the last couple of Akebia fruits and a few low-hanging kiwis before acquainting itself with the interior of my larger Havahart trap. I'm still jealous of people who can grow veg, but in the fruit department, I'm doin' okay.

Blueberry Harvest

Day 301: At its inception, the Berry Pen contained three blueberry bushes. Oddly, the native was the first one to bite the dust, and that after only producing two or three crops. A standard-size commercial cultivar lasted another two or three years, and then it too simply gave up the ghost. The survivor is a dwarf variety called "Jelly Bean," and what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in diameter. The berries are just as sweet as the candy which gives it its name, and fresh off the bush, sun-warm and squishy, there's no better snack on a hot afternoon. I have to keep the bush netted in early season because the Juncos are overly fond of the nectar in the flowers  They snip them off right at the stem with their little scissors-like beaks! Strangely enough, they're not at all interested in the fruit.

The Berry Pen

Day 206: Last year's garden was close to a total failure due to a late cold snap which was followed almost immediately by a very hot, dry spell. The only real success story was in my gooseberry crop which yielded up enough for two full batches of jam. The currants (left) were hit by disease and had to be pruned radically to remove infected branches, and consequently bore not a single berry to add colour to the mix. On the other hand, the gooseberries (right) produced a record number of fruits, to the point that at the very end of the season, I left a few on the bushes for the birds to enjoy. The Berry Pen is in full flower now, and if the weather cooperates, I should get fruit from both this year.

Kiwi Flowers

Day 269: I have yet to get a kiwi off my hardy, self-fertile vine, but the first few time it bloomed, it did so before the pollinators had arrived. Last year, it appeared to have set fruit, but then we were hit with a protracted spell of triple-digit temperatures and every berry in my garden dropped. That included not only the young, developing kiwis, but the mature gooseberries and red currants as well. I salvaged the jam fruits, carefully picking each one out of the bark mulch, but the kiwis were a total loss. Not a single berry remained. The vine seems to have learned a lesson as it's settled in, and is behaving accordingly by flowering slightly later when the pollinators are active. If our cooler, more normal weather holds, I might just see some fruit this year. In other news, though, the eight or nine figs I thought might provide a late-summer snack have disappeared. Because they have gone missing overnight and there is no evidence of them on the ground beneath the tree, I suspect a raccoon has been active.

Taste The Jam

Day 148: Once the flu-like side effects of the Moderna vaccine had worn off, I began to feel invigorated, just as I had done after the first dose. Perhaps "invigorated" isn't the right word; more like I'd eaten an entire eight-ounce bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans. Yesterday, I hit the yard, and I hit it hard. I cleared out the Barren Wasteland, preparatory to replanting it with cosmos, marigolds and alyssum and then, after a fifteen minute sit-down, I launched into weeding both the front and side flower beds (a job for which I usually allow 3-4 days). The "perky" phase is still full-blown today. I transplanted half a dozen volunteer yews, added soil amendments and fresh soil to the blueberry, gooseberry, currant and tomato containers, fussed and fiddled with a number of other small projects. While on my knees in the Berry Pen, I noticed that the gooseberries were beginning to put on their first leaves; I think I have one jar of jam left from last year's crop. Spring can't get here fast enough for me! I have a pair (male and female) Hardy Kiwi Anna vines on order, in the hopes that the male will also fertilized the purportedly-but-not "self-fertile" Issais which frame the Berry Pen gate, as well as a few packets of flower seeds. But maybe I'm a little premature. Yesterday, I was pelted with small hail while I was working. Today, it was snowing. Still, it felt good to get down-and-dirty in the garden.

Berry Bonanza

Day 262: Originally when I removed the sod from 25 sq. ft. of yard, sunk three big flowerpots in the soil up to their waists and fenced the area off to keep it safe from browsing deer and elk, I dubbed it the "Blueberry Pen" for the three bushes planted in its confines. One thing led to another, as things are wont to do; a pot for tomatoes was included, an extension was added and the fence restrung to accommodate an old, unhappy gooseberry (also in a large pot), and then in a major makeover, my botany partner spent an entire day busting sod while I hauled it away, enlarging the Pen to roughly 400 sq. ft. The new space was destined to hold Red Lake currants, additional gooseberry plants (I love gooseberry jam), a few special-case raspberries (separate from the main Heritage everbearing raspberry cage), a mulberry bush ("here we go 'round...") and yes, a pair of tomatoes, cherry and beefsteak. The entrance to the Berry Pen (renamed) has been defined by an arched trellis now bearing two vigorous hardy kiwi vines, and a potato start is bedded under straw in an open spot, its leaves reaching for the sunlight as it develops more tubers. It's a lot of garden in a small space, a little prickly to walk through for anyone not understanding that gooseberries bite back; an intense garden, now intensely focused on filling my freezer with my favourite fruits. The gooseberries are just starting to blush, the currants are reddening, and the blueberries are nearly as thick as leaves on the stems of their bushes, a veritable bonanza of berries waiting to be jammed and muffinized.