End of Season Review - Fruits & Berries

This past season, the garden was a flurry of activity when it came to fruit.  Not only did we have the most bountiful harvest since the trees were planted, but we also made several new additions to the garden.  These included 3 apple trees, 1 nectarine tree, 2 blueberry bushes, 2 haskap (aka honeyberry) bushes, 1 row of red raspberry canes, 1 row of yellow raspberry canes and 2 rows of blackberry canes.  We were even able to harvest a few small raspberries before the first frost.

Raspberries

This post will focus primarily on the crops that provided us with fruit this past year.  I'll be doing an overview of all the new plantings in the spring, when things start to wake up.

The plum & cherry tree are relatively new, both being planted in the summer of 2010.  We had a very small plum & cherry harvest in 2013 but in 2014 we ended up with zero fruit.  Best guess is that we had a killing frost at some point in the early spring.

This past year we harvested approximately 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of cherries – this is an estimate as in the excitement of it all, I completely forgot to put them on the scale.

A few had some cracking, but otherwise perfect

The plums, however, were weighed.  And what a harvest it was!

By way of comparison, the last time we harvested plums back in 2013, they weighed in at 726 grams (1.6 lbs) total, with Shiro comprising over 1/2 of the harvest.

Shiro Plums

The harvest in 2013 was actually a bit higher than the numbers indicate, but we had a big issue with the plum curculio, so a good portion of the plums – perhaps half – were disposed of.  And that was the other big surprise this year – no plum curculio damage whatsoever!  Unfortunately, the Japanese beetles somewhat made up for it as they chowed down on many of the almost ripe plums.


The plums on the right sustained too much Japanese Beetle damage to eat;
the small one in front of the basket is a French Prune,
my favourite for eating out-of-hand

Thankfully, there were so many plums that we still had plenty to eat as well as turn into an incredibly delicious jelly (the BEST jelly ever!) and plum sorbet.


Plum jelly packed in 125 ml jars

There are 5 varieties grafted onto the plum tree but only three of them bore fruit - Burbank, Shiro and French Prune.

Burbank Plums

In terms of taste, Burbank was good but Shiro was a bit bland.  Almost all of those went into making the jelly & sorbet, together with a good portion of the Burbanks.  My favourite for fresh eating, by far, was the French Prune - the few that we harvested barely made it back to the kitchen.

French Prune plums
 

And last, but certainly not least, were the strawberries.


Bowl of strawberries in early July

They did very well this year – up from last year’s total of 2.6 kg (5.8 lbs).  Not too shabby at all!

Most were eaten fresh, but I did place a few packets in the freezer.  Although not as good as fresh, they are still far superior to the tasteless ones at the market which are not worth bothering with at all.  Boy, the aroma when I open a packet…just heavenly!


Overall Impressions & Plan for Next Year

I'm calling this past year quite the fruity success, both in terms of harvesting and setting the stage for future harvests.

The strawberry bed will be in it's 3rd year of fruiting this summer, so I should really be starting a new one.  But, in the interest of slowing down this year, I have decided to wait until 2017.

One task that I will not be delaying is installing hardware cloth around all of the tree trunks.  We have not had much rabbit damage on the trees up until now, but all it takes is one hungry bunny.  The new plantings do have those white, plastic guards around the trunks, but they are unlikely to be as effective as metal mesh.

I’m not really sure what to expect from the berry canes in terms of growth habit but suspect that I may have to erect some type of support for them so that they don’t go sprawling all over the place.  And I’m hopeful that I’ll be harvesting more than a few berries from them next season.

When it comes to all of the new plantings, my main concern is, of course, that they make it through their first winter ok.  We have had a relatively mild winter season so far, although we did have some extremely cold temps this past weekend.  But it’s more the up and down temperatures that have me worried – those can wreak havoc on new and old plantings alike.  Won't be too much longer until I find out if everything pulled through - and my fingers will be crossed until then.