Bee and Thistle Berry Orchard

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. Unless we get a torrential downpour, work will proceed as planned! The berm maker needed some modifications so it was taken back to the shop this morning, and with some adjustments, it will make a berm that should work. Rows are all marked (albeit a little wobbly in places hehe). Peter did that this afternoon while Alec and I unloaded the plants and unwrapped 2000 of them, and organized the row ends. Then we set up…wait for it…..

Has-KAMP in the trailer, since the Thistle Orchard is a half a mile from the house and we didn’t want to be running back all the time for stuff.

The LIST

Chairs
Extra hats
Sunglasses
Extra boots
Raingear for everyone
Extra clean socks
Extra clean jeans (Peter tends to spray himself when he’s filling the tank; it’s actually rather comical to watch…but he does get wet!)
Drinks–soda pop, juices, lots of water, extra 10 gallon of water jug, green tea, etc.
Snacks–cookies, apples, tangerines, bananas, granola bars, regular chocolate bars
ICE
Cooler for drinks and fruit/chocolate bars
Row markers, marker
notepad and pen in holder
TP
Paper Towel
First Aid Kit
Cell phones and Camera
Emergency supplies — tow rope, jacks
Towels, facecloths, wash basin, extra jug of water for washing up
Waterless hand cleaner
Lots of gloves
Latex gloves a box
Garbage bags–large and kitchen size
Cardboard boxes to hold Plants cut to fit the trays
BUG SPRAY–the mosquitoes are OUT FOR BLOOD
Sun Screen
Hand lotion
Chap Stick
Eye drops
Extra gas for tractor

Still more to add to the list tonight.

Back to work!!

10 p.m. It was a 16 hour work day getting ready for tomorrow. Plants picked up, tractor set up, berm maker tried and not going to be used after all until it’s modified some more. So back to Plan A. Regular planting with the Mechanical Planter. Unpacked 5000 total plants and set at top of rows for easy access, and also for them to thaw. Filled 500 gallon water tank with ‘fire hose’ sized hose in about 3 minutes from the slough. That was placed in the middle of the orchard with an eye to using it to refill the Mechanical Planter tank every 2 rows. Total of 55 rows marked (probably a bit more than we need). Planted one test row of 171 plants. Row is about 450 feet long. That went very well; Alec mastered the Mechanical Planter in about 10 minutes. With extra people running plants and doing stuff tomorrow, ideally the tractor will keep ‘moving’ and we’ll have an assembly line thing going on. We’re tired, but it was a productive day.

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 several conversations discussing the merits of various things, and are hoping to benefit from discussions with other growers. He may be borrowing our Mechanical Planter as well. He’s coming out Saturday to help, and to watch it in action.

First is Watering

My experience so far with the watering issue? I think that watering fairly well for the first week of transplant establishment is pretty critical. In other words, you don’t want things dry, but I also think there is such a thing as ‘too wet’. So far, we’ve watered about every 3 days and it’s not rained a drop since we planted on May 25; the weather has been dry and sunny, averaging 22C in the daytime, with highs of 27C, and about 7C-9C at night, so the top three inches are drying out quickly. But every time I make a decision to water, I use my moisture meter, and if it’s indicating the high end of ‘moist’ at the 6″ depth, I don’t water. It almost seems as if the plants like it a little drier than wetter at his stage (10-11 days after transplanting). In retrospect, I’m almost glad we couldn’t afford the irrigation system. Of course, it’s to the benefit of irrigation equipment suppliers to convince you that you NEED one; I thought I could spend a lot of hours out there and keep my 42K that it was going to cost us. I also think that the plants will be happy enough with June rains, which are sure to fall. And in 2 years, the whole watering thing will be a non-issue yet. If we turn to an extended drought? We’ll put in a new well then…one thing about farming is that you have to be flexible every step of the way! More on watering in the soil height.

Second is Soil height relative to surrounding soil

Garth Sander was promoting his hilling machine he’s having custom made by

Lavoie’s Machining & Welding
551 4th St E, Spiritwood, SK S0J 2M0
306-883-2315

His feeling, from talking with Battle River Berries and Haskap Central, is that the hills/berms make the plants more accessible to the mechanical harvester. If you are planning a strictly U-pick operation, it probably doesn’t matter, but I think the berms would also provide for better drainage, and possibly avoid the pooling of water in Spring (and during heavy rains) which the Haskap don’t seem to like anyway. I think with that in mind, we will likely berm the Thistle Orchard. Peter is picking up the machine tomorrow, and plans to do that (yes, he’s a guinea pig, why do you ask?) in conjunction with row marking on Friday, June 7.

Alec (our son the trucker) and I will pick up the plants in Prince Albert from Haskap Central Sales storage facility while Peter is doing that. The round trip for us will take about 4 hours (with a little side trip to Timmies of course!!). The storage facility is about a 10 minute drive from Prince Albert, and Prince Albert is about an hour’s drive from here. 75 boxes with 120 plants in each box–should fit in our trailer and on the back of the truck, with a total weight of under 3000 lbs. We can most likely do it in one trip.

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 the roots and seeing what growth we have down there! Exciting.

The benchmark Tundra plant (below right) on June 4, 2013. Ten days after transplanting (May 25, 2013) from dormant state. It is officially ‘Plant 5-3 TU13’ meaning Row 5, Plant 3, Tundra planted 2013.

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 the different ones created in the trial plots at the university, and by propagators/growers who were interested in the research and development of this new berry. Focus was not on things like mulches, row covers, inter-row plantings, soil amendments, and things of that nature. First orchards were using plastic and fabric mulch with varying success. It quickly became evident that insect pests were not really going to be an issue. I find that true in my own 4 plants that I’ve had growing for 2 years. I never see anything chewing on them. The Berry Blue (TM) ones seem to show that characteristic sunburn look near the end of the summer, but the leaves fall off, and they come back with renewed vigour in the spring, presumably unaffected by that dark leaf. If it’s fungus, it certainly does not hang around and re-infect in the spring!

One focus for me this year is researching merits of different plant spacing. The Home Acre has 30″ spacing between the 900+ plants there, with 11′ spacing from row to row. There are 14 rows, and each has between 48 and 65 plants; some rows are shorter because of the rock pile and the mountain of dirt from the old slough in the NorthEast Corner. We still haven’t decided what the spacing will be in the Thistle Orchard. Every morning we wake up, and say ‘okay, it will be this, or that’ varying from 30″ to 48″”!! I suspect we’ll go with 32″ to 36″. Looking at the 4 plants I have established in 2011, and seeing how they are pretty much completely filling a 3 foot radius as they go through their third year, I cannot see 30″ as being that reasonable, but of course, no one has done that yet, so I’m ‘daring to Bee different’ and trying it out. Mathematically speaking, I can then plant the remaining 9000 plants on about 7 acres, with 11′ row spacing, and 32″ plant spacing. I have plenty of extra land (the Thistle Orchard plot actually measures about 22 acres of cleared, accessible land), so there is lots of room for turning zones, access routes, fencing lines, and so forth. The 11′ row spacing will allow the mechanical harvester to fit neatly in the rows and leave plenty of room for the tractor as well. Originally, we were looking at 14′-16′ row spacing, but BEI International assured us that we would not need that much room, particularly for the model we are considering (pull behind BEI Model 500). They advised 11′, with the knowledge that the plants will ultimately spread sideways and cover 2.5 feet or so on each side of their centre line (assuming an end diameter of no more than 5 feet). That leaves 6 feet clear in the middle, which easily seems achievable.

From Max Lint, BEI INTERNATIONAL

Max Lint
BEI International, LLC
01-269-637-8541 Ext. 105
01-269-637-4233 Fax
01-616-204-8274 Cell

11 foot row spacing or 18 rows per acre (give or take, since I’m putting a shelterbelt midway through the orchard, and leaving 2 rows open for that)
Plant spacing 32″ There are ~2500 available inches in 209′ so 2500/32 is ~78 plants per acre/row 78 x 18 is ~1400 per acre.

I have 9000 plants to plant, so 9000/1400 is ~6.5 acres. If I leave the shelterbelt area open, I’ll need just about 7 acres ready up there, and there is far more than that available. I have a rough plot plan, and it works out to a bit of a trapezoid, with 450 foot rows at the West end and 750 foot rows at the East end. The North end is straight along the tree line, and the South end will be angled from the long edge of the 750′ to the short end of 450′. We roughly marked that out a few weeks ago, and finely cultivated that several times, with a final pass proposed along with edge marking on Thursday. The plants will be picked up on Thursday and Friday morning, and the crew comes Friday to help! Main planting will be on Saturday, with two additional people (should be 7 or 8 altogether), so we hope for 500 plants an hour–keeping the pace with runners providing plants for the trays as they empty, rotation of workers through different stations (unpackers, loaders, runners, water fillers, gas fillers, tractor drivers, quad/trailer drivers) and the tractor hopefully moving almost all the time. So exciting!

Another focus is going to be on what to put between the rows. I have bags of Dwarf White Dutch Clover seed I had planned to use, but we have decided to veer into sustainable practice, and apply for organic certification in 2 years. Whether that seed will qualify is unknown to me at this time, but I doubt it. Another possibility is planting some certified organic legumes, and mowing them down before they flower, incorporating the trimmings into the soil. Excellent for fixing nitrogen and good green manure. I do not think anyone has done that yet, although the practice is common enough in crop rotation circles. For now, we are trying to access some organic flax straw to use as mulch. That might be more difficult than I think it is, but we’ll see. Until we make a final decision on that, we’ll lightly cultivate for weeds with the chains/tractor for between the rows, and handweed/hoe around the plants themselves. I actually have been walking the rows every day with my trusty scuttle hoe, and just keeping it maintained that way. Of course, 8 acres is a lot more than one acre….but I can walk the Home Acre in about 2 hours and just flick the hoe out at any newly emerging weeds as I walk, and that’s working for me! Prior to planting the orchard, I was walking at least 2 hours a day anyway, keeping our dog fit (that was my excuse, but I love to walk so Deke provided me with the reason to get up early and go out there).

Our Dog, Deke, 3 year old chocolate lab

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 Environmental Sciences, and published in Feb, 2012. He used Haskap berries, specifically Tundra, Borealis, and Indigo Gem 9-15, from the Univ of SK, in his work. The other eight fruits were obtained from various businesses in N.S.

Here is a short excerpt from his Summary:

The results indicated that haskap berries, especially cv. ‘Borealis’ possessed the highest antioxidant capacities and total phenolic contents (of the 9 fruits studied–addition mine), specifically total flavonoid among the tested fruits and could be used as a promising fruit source of natural dietary antioxidants.

The final analysis shows Haskap consistently coming in at just about 2 times blueberries, and more than all the other 8 fruits.

Secondly, who hasn’t heard about ‘Free Radicals’ and the damage they can do?

You can read about it second in the list of the cited link I provided earlier.

Summary: Group of research scientists in China did in-vitro (in the glass/dish, as it were) studies of Haskap among 2 other berries. Lonicera caerulea var. edulis (blue honeysuckle), Rubus idaeus (red raspberry) and Vaccinium uliginosum Linn.(blueberry) indigenous to the Greater Higgnan Mountains in northeast China, were rich in anthocyanins.

Their summary basically has the blue honeysuckle (EBH assuming) as having the highest rating in combating free radical damage.

I like to think of them like little vacuum cleaners in the body, although they chemically decompose bad things floating around and make them less harmful (simple version). Free radicals are definitely associated with increased cancer, so eat berries!! Dr. Oz told you so, too!

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 of Elk Fencing available for much cheaper. We’d need about a little over half a mile total (600 feet North and 800 feet South x 2), and I already have the posts, so this might be a good option. We’ll talk some more, but he may rent our planter and tractor to establish his orchard in the near future (or we can barter a trade for his fence?). It’s much quicker than we thought, and we don’t have an account set up, but it’s looking more and more like our planter will be rented out to others after we are finished planting the Thistle North Orchard. Someone warned me that this would happen. The whole thing takes off like wildfire pretty fast. Well, I’ll get out my hoses hehe.

I don’t think we’ll need to fence the ‘Home Acre’. Our dog is in there all the time, and the deer don’t come this close to the house or barnyard since we got him. At least we don’t see deer tracks past the electric field fence in the past year or two.

Interesting reading on Gum Disease and the helpful effects of good things (like anthocyanins, flavonoids and phenols found in Haskap).

ipopolysaccharide in gingival fibroblasts

A. Zda?ilováa,
A. Rajnochová Svobodováa
K. Chytilováb,
V. Šimáneka,
J. Ulrichováa

a Department of Medical Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Hn?votínská 3, Palacký University, 775 15 Olomouc, Czech Republic
b Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, I.P. Pavlova 6, University Hospital, 775 20 Olomouc, Czech Republic

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2010.03.024, How to Cite or Link Using DOI

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Abstract

The most common oral diseases have a microbial aetiology. Pathogenic bacteria liberate a number of irritating agents including a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) that activates pro-inflammatory cytokines promoting increased activity of polymorphonucleocytes (PMN). Release of PMN-derived free radicals into an infected gingival area affects gums, periodontal ligaments and alveolar bone. Berries of Lonicera caerulea L. (blue honeysuckle) are rich in phenolics, particularly phenolic acids, flavonoids and anthocyanins that have multiple biological activities in vitro and in vivo such as antiadherence, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Studies have shown that polyphenols suppress a number of LPS-induced signals and thus could be effective against gingivitis. Here we assessed effects of the polyphenolic fraction of L. caerulea fruits (PFLC; containing 77% anthocyanins) on LPS-induced oxidative damage and inflammation in human gingival fibroblasts. Application of PFLC (10–50 ?g/ml) reduced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, intracellular glutathione (GSH) depletion as well as lipid peroxidation in LPS-treated cells. PFLC treatment also inhibited LPS-induced up-regulation of interleukin-1? (IL-1?), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumour necrosis factor-? (TNF-?) and it suppressed expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2). The effects are presumably linked to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities and suggest its use in attenuating the inflammatory process, including periodontal disease.

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 in them by May 21. I didn’t see a bee before that, though–still too cold I guess. I lost count after 200 berries on one plant…and more to come. The growth in these 4 plants is crazy good this year!

Next year, we plan to set up several bee hives in the orchard. Groot’s Honey Farm is located fairly near to us (about 1.5 hours away) and there are several apiaries in the local area as well, some of whom would be happy to set up hives here, although we are wanting to do them ourselves. Peter worked with someone who actually gave him some beekeeping supplies and some clothing and things, but we don’t have a clue how to run that, although I’m sure we can learn! The bees would definitely love the clover in the field and in the orchard! We’ve also been doing some extensive reading on Native Bees and how to provide nesting and cover sites for them. We have quite a few of them in evidence in the third week of May, so that might be a really viable alternative. I like the idea of Native Bees working the Haskap. They really are quite efficient, and my research and reading on them suggests they are a LOT more efficient than installed purchased beehives!

MULCHING and ROW COVER

The plan is to plant Dwarf Dutch Clover between the rows in a 6 foot strip, and use a flax shredded straw mulch on the plants themselves. Our neighbour has a straw shredder and we are considering using that. We have a real aversion to plastic mulch and won’t use it. I know a lot of growers are using it, with different success rates, but my feeling is that it encourages roots to grow closer to the surface, which you don’t want. I hate plastic on the ground, too. Just goes against the grain for me.

One issue for us might be the ground squirrels and voles that would find the straw quite to their liking for winter warmth, but they also like clover, and might hang out there instead. There are quite a few voles active in that area of the quarter-section, and they tend to chew on nice new wood. I don’t know if setting up traps for them is a feasible thing to do or not. So we might consider doing some ‘test rows’ this winter, and see how it goes next year, rather than risk the whole orchard. Maybe 1/3 in straw with clover, 1/3 in straw with no clover (kept cultivated and black), and 1/3 in nothing at all. We’ll see what others have to say about what they are doing. Wood chips are also a consideration, and may be fairly accessible to us since Peter has worked at the Mill in Big River and might have an ‘in road’ to accessing them. I have done quite a bit of reading on the merits of wood chips versus other types of mulches from some different research projects done in the past 10 years, and it’s interesting to compare the conclusions. Maybe we’ll make our own conclusions, and do a couple of ‘test’ plots of our own.

The Home Acre which we planted on May 25, is really coming along. It’s been 6 days since planting, and I am seeing green leaves and buds on over 98 percent of plants.

Perhaps 2/100 may not survive, but one thing about Haskap? They aren’t dead until they haven’t shown life for 2 years. I was digging up some dirt to use for a flower bed from near the place we had set the plugs as we were thawing them. That’s SIX days ago—and I found one lonely plant with a dried out root system having been in the sun for 6 days..that was left behind! I believe it will come back to life, since (surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly) I am seeing green buds on the tips of it. So I planted it in the Nursery Bed and gave it a good dose of water and a little extra bone meal around the roots. I’ll go out and get photos of that plant later today:
Survival of the Fittest? I think so!! This plant might even surpass its neighbours.

Photo of the greening up ones throughout the orchard

The benchmark Tundra plant is doing very well

So far, all the plants in the Home Acre orchard have gotten two waterings. There is plenty of moisture at the 6″ mark, which would be where the bottom of the roots is located. I’m still working with a hose and hose extensions, and doing this furrow irrigation method, which takes me about 3 hours for the whole acre. It will go faster once Peter sets up the new pump and diffuser, and we can water from the trailer. I suppose we’ll be able to water an acre in an hour, which won’t be too bad. There is no rain predicted to fall now until Thursday, June 6!! We haven’t had any rain in any significant watering amount in 2 weeks or more.

I dug down and no longer am finding frost at the 8″ mark, and visited the North Orchard, and dug down there as well, and I’m no longer finding frost. We have cultivated this to ‘black’ several times, and we’ll make one more row pass on it on June 6th, preparatory to planting June 7-9.

And the nursery where the Berry Smart Blue Pollenizers are waiting for the North Orchard (AKA Thistle Acres)

And this is a view of the Home Acre and the family garden plot, which is happily germinating.

Last season, I never bought a vegetable until early May (except for salad greens). I was able to freeze (peas, broad beans, beans, carrots, pureed zucchini, corn, cabbage, turnip, broccoli, cauliflower) and cold cellar enough vegetables (onions, cabbage, turnip, potatoes) to have them all winter, and I also gave some away to our son and some neighbours. I am on my last few jars of strawberry, rhubarb, and raspberry jam, though. I also canned zucchini, pickles, relish, chutney, ‘chow’, salsa, and tomatoes. The strawberries should be ripe in about 3 or 4 weeks, and I still have 5 quart bags of them in the freezer along with several bags of rhubarb. We are currently eating salad from the garden (onion tops and romaine lettuce) and the spinach and swiss chard should be ready for picking in 2 weeks. I am eating rhubarb, and have been all week. Must make some rhubarb jelly this weekend!

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 the North and West; natural ridge of land to the South West of the orchard protects it somewhat. The remaining windbreak will be needed on the East and South East sides. So far, we’ve been in contact with the Shelterbelt program in Indian Head, and although this is their last year offering trees and shrubs, we were too late to be put on the list. They did let us know that we could call and reserve any ‘leftovers’ on June 3, and they feel we will still find plenty to our liking. Ideally, we would shelterbelt at least 3500 total feet, going up the middle of the orchard as well as planting on the ridge side, the South, and South West sides. If this isn’t feasible, we will consider purchasing shelterbelt trees and shrubs commercially.

There is a short row (60 feet) of Mountain Pine planted on the West side of the Home Acre; they will not grow fast enough to be useful, but they will be pretty in 10 years 🙂 The Home Acre also has natural trees on the other 3 sides, so the biggest worry is the West exposure coming from the pasture/hayfield; the winds from the West can get pretty intense at times. In the past 2 years, we’ve twice had a plow wind come through there during the unstable weather in July. Plow Wind: A term used in the midwestern United States (and Canada) to describe strong, straight-line winds associated with squall lines and thunderstorms; resulting damage is usually confined to narrow zones like that caused by tornadoes; however, the winds are all in one direction. Also spelled plough wind. Also known as derecho. from
McGraw-Hill Science & Technology Dictionary

This Fall, we will likely install a windbreak fence until the shelterbelt trees do some growing! Probably two; one half way across the 14 rows we have planted there. We have significant investment in a pile of lumber we purchased two years ago, which includes quite a few stacks of slab-type fencing perfect for this job! Now all is needed is a little elbow grease and some time in the Fall amidst hunting and bear guiding activities 🙂

Today it was 26C in the orchard, and I measured the moisture levels in the ground, and decided not to water at all today. There is adequate moisture from 1″ to 7″ in the orchard and I don’t want to risk over-watering either. There is some new budding on many of the plugs and all in all, it’s looking like a happy place. For some reason, I thought I might play some classical music and set up speakers in the orchard. We used to play the radio in the barn for the dairy cows and it seemed to help them relax and produce (let-down) more milk, so one never knows how plants feel….can’t hurt to be nice to them!

So I spent the morning weeding my regular garden and checking out the 4 Haskap that I had planted 2 years ago in my main veggie garden. They are absolutely growing like mad, and like where they are. Although both the pollenizers had some mouse damage, and I needed to prune out some dead wood, that actually seems to have stimulated so much new growth, I can see pruning again after fruiting. I counted over 400 pairs of flowers on the larger Borealis, and about 80 pairs each on the Berry Blue. The smaller Borealis was stepped on by a cow last year, and has taken some time to recover…I suppose were I stepped on by a cow, I might not feel like growing much the following year, either. The neighbour apologized and offered to make it up to me, but I assured him that once we get our 10,000 plants in place, I doubt I’ll miss one little Borealis. But I did baby it a little over the fall and winter, and fed it a little extra bone meal this Spring. Last year I had 12 berries from the larger Borealis, and the day I decided to go out and eat them–the birds beat me to it. And I’d JUST netted the strawberries. I got 100 lbs of strawberries, and nary a Haskap, but I think my lesson has been learned. This year, I’ll net the Haskap on the 6th of June. We have 4000 feet of bale netting that might come in handy, and was useful for the strawberries and raspberries last year.

Photos of the larger Borealis–it’s about 4 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide:

3 years old–purchased at Canadian Tire Hardware–origin unknown (this was in 2011, which was the first we’d heard of them. Peter was thinking of planting Saskatoons, and a friend of his said ‘WHY NOT HASKAP?’ and right after that, he went to Haskap Days 2011 and came home more excited about a new project than I’d seen him in many many years—so we phoned Curtis at Haskap Central and requested 10,000 plants to be started for us. He is SO. ENTHUSIASTIC. it’s positively contagious. People thought (and still think) we were nuts, but you know, life is short and you should not ignore these dreams too long, or you’ll never try anything new!.

Photo of the smaller Borealis–which was injured by a cow hoof–it’s right behind the Berry Blue:

Some other interesting things:

After Haskap Days in 2011 (Margie was ill that week, so Peter attended alone), and having been introduced to the Romance Series of dwarf sour Cherries: in 2004, the Romance series of dwarf sour cherries was released. These include ‘Juliet’, ‘Romeo’, ‘Cupid’, ‘Valentine’, and ‘Crimson Passion’ by Dr. Bors at the Univ of SK and Peter and I thought it would be fun to purchase 3 or 4 plants. In 2011, we purchased this lovely CUPID Cherry, and planted it with great care, some purchased potting soil mix (and lots of horse manure from across the road) in a large hole in our front yard.
Here is the CUPID Cherry on May 29, 2013. It is a little behind the CARMINE JEWEL (not in the Romance Series, but released as a dwarf sour cherry in 1999) Cherry plants blossoming, just really getting going this week. It is nearly 4 feet tall, and I think it is 3 years old, possibly 4. It was not very big when we got it in 2011, maybe 18 inches tall.

The Carmines have been blossoming and keeping wild bees and these little beautiful blue butterflies/moths? busy for a week. Every time I go out there, something is feeding on those flowers, so I’m hoping there is lots of pollinating going on out there! I hope to get a photo of one of those pretty blue butterflies, so someone can identify it for me. If you know what they are, let me know. Sky blue, very small (less than an inch, maybe 3/4 inch wings). The Carmines are all about 2 feet tall, and probably in their third year. Of course, with a purchase from the Hardware, one can never be certain how old the plants are.

And here is a photo of 3 of them, the Cupid in the front, and the two Carmine Jewel in the back. There is a third Carmine to the left, but it’s not in the photo. I can dream of cherry pie, though. Maybe I’ll be able to make one this year. Last year, I had about 20 cherries and ate them directly from the trees 🙂 They were very good! Peter was at work, and he was a little disappointed, so I won’t be so greedy this year.