July Update: Summer Berries, MNGA Meeting, & More…
Its seems increasingly unlikely to find time for any extensive posting these days— with the busyness of summer and all of it’s seemingly infinite activities, computer time is low priority. So for now I’ll share some quick thoughts with photos and a few video clips of recent harvests and happenings!
It was a great season for Ribes— picked the last of the black currants last week.Started my first batch of Crème de cassis— a sought after black currant liqueur. Looking forward to drinking this in a few months…My white and red currants have just finished up for the season and the birds always tend to get the last few strigs. Primus, however, is the latest ripening of the whites— which is proving to be a very valuable trait for extending the season. Same for early varieties.This is an edible landscape Roots To Fruits installed a few years ago in downtown Clarkston; featuring clove currants, alpine strawberries, and prostrate birds foot trefoil as a nitrogen fixing/weed suppressing ground cover.And a handful of deliciousness…free for the picking! We’re scheming more and more PUBLIC edible landscapes.Unfortunately my entire gooseberry patch got pretty much denuded by imported currant worm…really need to figure out a prevention strategy for next season as gooseberries are one of my most prized crops. Finicky indeed.Despite the magnitude of the situation regarding the damn currant worms, I managed to do a sampling of a few of the dozen or so varieties in my collection. All at varying degrees of ripeness, the black velvets were slightly under ripe but time was of the essence with my little duckies on the case.Marc Boone also brought a sampling from his collection to the MNGA summer meeting. All very tasty, particularly Poorman.The MNGA summer picnic was hosted at Nash Nurseries in Owosso, MI. It was a lovely day and a great turnout.Dennis Strahle and Marc Boone, two of our core members, manning the auction! Always a highlight at meetings…Bill Nash and his family were very warm and welcoming. Bill led the group on a tour of the farm highlighting many of the tree plantings from the past 50+ years. Beautiful work.English walnut on black walnut roots, amazing contrast at the graft union. Very cool…This is a rare and unique cut-leaf black walnut specimen. Interesting and ornamental but low quality nuts.Chestnut flowers don’t have the most appetizing smell but they sure are visually appealing.Recent glimpse of the garden-orchard from the SE corner.While working out in the orchard on our Ecological Management and Renovation of Neglected Apple Orchards in SE MI, I found this little one hanging out on the surface of a grafted limb. CutieThe tail end of white currant season meets the onset of purple raspberry season!Complete gourmet geekdom.These are three European pear cultivars I planted earlier this year and they’re being trained as cordons.Pretty sparse fruit set on most pome fruits this year, but this second year ‘Hamese’ Asian pear graft didn’t hesitate to set a couple pears. Excited to sample.The July Oakland County Permaculture Meetup was our second anniversary so it was hosted at my place—where it all started. I gave a nice tour.Shared out latest findings in orchard renovation and gave an update of our grant funded research.Talked a bit about scything in the orchard.
And of course there is always more to share, but to avoid lengthiness, which I may have nearly failed to do— we’ll wrap it up with these fascinating video clips of Dennis Fulbright explaining biological control of chestnut blight. Cutting edge research…
The Fruit Nut 