Author Archives: beeandthistle

Busy busy. Setting up the boxes of plants at the ends of rows and unpacked 2000 tonight. Don’t want too many more to thaw just yet. Hoping the rain holds off for a bit, although it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. … Continue reading →

10:30 a.m. 76 boxes with 120 in each!! Loaded in an hour and ready to go home. This is 1/4 of the way done. 1 p.m. home and having lunch, ready to take plants up to the Thistle Orchard!

Evening sunset over Bee & Thistle Berry Orchard, June 7. photo courtesy of Alec, who came down for the night to help through the weekend.

Over the past week, Peter has been in contact with a new orchard developer. ‘Garth’ is planning an orchard of 10,000 Haskap about an hour and a half from here, calling it Willow Ridge Haskap. He and Peter have spent … Continue reading →

More on those photos later. Suffice it to say that some of the plants were ‘heeled in’ by people who really didn’t know what 30″ is…hehe. So I’m moving a few of them, and at the same time, looking at … Continue reading →

Haskap orchards have not really been around all that long in Saskatchewan. Trial plots were set up in the 1997-2007 years in conjunction with University of Saskatchewan researcher, Dr. Bob Bors. Experimental work focused on cultivars and the merits of … Continue reading →

Consistently, in study after study, Haskap comes ahead of other fruits in antioxidant properties. You can read about it here: This study was conducted at Nova Scotia Agricultural College by H.P. Vasantha Rupasinghe, Ph.D, a professor in the Dept of … Continue reading →

It’s going to be necessary, you can be sure of it. I had plans for fencing purchased commercially and installed on metal posts, but I may not need to do that. I was talking with someone yesterday, who has miles … Continue reading →

The wild bees are busy at work in the 4 established Haskap plants, and some green fruit has already set. The bees have been active over a week. The plants started blossoming on May 15, and the bees were active … Continue reading →

We are exploring the merits of various shelterbelts and windbreaks. For now, neither of the existing orchards has a windbreak planted by us, but the larger orchard which we will plant on June 8 has a natural tree line to … Continue reading →