There will be fruit
It looks like this year I will actually be able to enjoy the fruits of my labors in the garden, literally. Unless something crazy happens, I will have a few different fruits to snack on sometime soon.
First, both of my new blueberry bushes have produced berries!
It seems like the few warm weekends we had, as well as my efforts in moving the pots next to the blooming forsythia every day (then putting them back somewhere safe from deer each evening) have paid off.
We may not get a huge harvest of blueberries, but we'll at least get to taste them.
I still have a steady stream of these hitting the compost pile, but that's not the fruit that I'm talking about today:
For the first time, my plum tree has produced tiny fruits:
I'm really excited about this! Not that I really love plums -- they're good, but not my favorite fruit -- but they'll be plums that I grew, which makes all the difference.
Then there are the mulberries:
This is the red mulberry tree in the back corner of my yard. I'm afraid to look at the white mulberry that overhangs the driveway, as that's the one that always carpets the ground with fallen berries.
Still, I hope to get at least one mulberry pie out of it this year.
Do serviceberries count as fruit?
I'm not even sure if they're edible, but I'll do some research and give them a try... as long as the birds don't get to them all first.
I'm going to have a multitude of blackhaw viburnum berries this year too -- the trees bloomed like crazy this year! Again, not sure if they're human-edible, but I'll check into it.
So I'm ready to start snacking on "garden-fresh" fruit soon. I can't wait!
.
Serviceberries are indeed edible, if the birds don't get them first. My mother always called them saskatoon berries and they were one of her favourites.
Fruit is always exciting and some of my favorite garden treats (because they come back every year, unlike the vegetables). Still, I think freezes eliminated all my peaches this year.
I agree 100%, there's nothing quite like eating produce that grew in your own garden. The only non-citrus fruit tree we have is a nectarine. Not a lot of fruit this year, and still a month away from being ripe. Last year rats (!!!) ate every single fruit except one. Yes, we got to share one nectarine between the four of us :-).
I had no idea you could eat mulberries. Never heard of mulberry pie. What does it taste like?
The great thing about blue-berries is that you can produce as many plants as you want relatively easily since they propagate by branch cutting successfully whenever I've used my cloning gel.
It will be my first year with fruit too so I'm looking forward to it. Mine still haven't flowered yet though.
Marguerite: thanks!
Mud: All of my fruit plants (except the mulberries) are in pots, so I can move them (with some effort) if a late freeze threatens.
Gerhard: Mulberry pie tastes like mulberries, but in pie form. ;-) It's a sweet and mellow flavor, with the texture of raspberries with a smoother flavor.
Steve: I may give it a try once these bushes get large enough to need a pruning. I'm not going to do anything to them this year though.
Blueberries - how wonderful! Blueberries do well in my area but I've never tried to grow them.
Now I'm going to have to give growing blueberries a try. Thanks for posting!
How exciting! Our blueberries are putting on a show this spring too, although I wonder how many we'll get. We may have to fight the birds for them ;) It is so exciting to see fruit trees producing for the time. When you think of everything that has to happen for fruit to set, the flowers...the right weather...enough pollinators. The fruits are like little miniature miracles on a branch. Our Stella cherry is fruiting for the first time, and I can't wait to see how the cherries taste. Good luck with your plums!
Growing your own blueberries is very cool! Don't they had all kinds of special pH requirements? Your photos make the plums look luscious already. I have a blackhaw too, but mine is for the birds. I hope I get fruit for the 1st time this year. My tree bloomed well too.
Anne: Mine are growing in pots, and I added soil acidifier (which is basically sulphur) to the potting mix. I'm not sure what will happen when the acidity gets too low, but I'll read up on it.
Also, the plums *are* luscious, if you like pea-sized plums. ;-)
One of the thing's I'm finding is that blueberry plants don't necessarily need acidic soil to live. I've been adding pine bark to mine just to drop it a bit, but I haven't seen any signs of slowed growth on any of my blueberries, and I've tested the ph in that area to be around 6.5ph.