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SECRET BERRIES, CHERRIES FOR ALL, & WEEDS

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 Shad, Service, June: All The Same Berry

   I’m not saying where my juneberries — now ripe — are, except to say that they are not here on my farmden. If you don’t know juneberries (Amelanchier spp.), you’ll wish you did. Imagine, if you will, a blueberry look-alike with the sweetness and richness of a sweet cherry along with a hint of almond. The plant is also known as shadbush, shadblow, serviceberry, and, in the case of one of the species, saskatoon.

One bush of my "secret" juneberries, in bloom in April.

One bush of my “secret” juneberries, in bloom in April.

    I’ve planted and grown juneberries, but no longer do so. In the 15 years during which I had 6 plants, I harvested only a handful of berries. Juneberries, although look-alikes for blueberries, are pome fruits, related to apple and sharing many of the same pest problems. Here, apple has many problems, including plum curculio, apple maggot, cedar-apple rust, and black rot.
    But other sites are more friendly to apple and especially to juneberry. Juneberry is commonly planted as an ornamental; I’ve seen it doing well with the sun beating down on a strip of soil between a vertical wall of concrete and a concrete sidewalk near the entrance to a shopping mall, with passing shoppers unaware of the tasty berries dangling from the branches. (“My” secret juneberries are closer than the nearest shopping mall. Here’s a hint: Mine are within 4 miles of my farmden.)
    

Part of the juneberry harvest.

Part of the juneberry harvest.

Juneberry is also a native plant (in every state, in fact) that, in good years, is laden with fruit. Except, as I said, here on my farmden. It’s well worth planting on the chance that it will thrive. I should have given up on mine sooner.
    As an ornamental, juneberry is valued for it’s neat form in winter, that of a shrub or a small tree, for it’s white or pink blossoms, and, with a variety such as Autumn Blaze, for the crimson color its leaves turn in fall.
    It would be nice to be able to just wander out my back door to pick juneberries, but I won’t complain. A 4-mile bike ride on an early summer morning isn’t too much to pay for the berries.

Nanking, The Easiest Cherry of All

    Right now, I can walk out my FRONT door to enjoy another now-ripe, uncommon fruit. Years ago, I had planted forsythia along my driveway. The yellow blossoms fairly glowed with heat in April, but after that the row of bushes was just a blob of greenery. Not unattractive, but not necessarily attractive either.
    I ripped out the forsythia and planted instead a row of Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa), a species of cherry from Manchuria that first made it to American shores — to great enthusiasm — at the end of the 18th century. Gardeners were not sure whether to praise it more highly as an ornamental or as a fruiting plants. When my plants are awash in white blossoms, bicyclists have stopped and asked for the identity of the plants.

Nanking cherry in bloom in April

Nanking cherry in bloom in April

    Nanking cherry blossoms at about the same time as forsythia but does not subsequently recede into obscurity. Right now the greenery is punctuated by bright red cherries, their small (1/2 inch or slightly larger) size offset by their abundance. Enough to almost hide the branches. Enough so that birds can eat them, chipmunks can eat them, my ducks can eat them, and still there’s more than enough for us humans. The flavor varies from bush to bush, but they’re all good, tasting somewhere on the spectrum between sweet and tart cherry.

Note the profusion of cherries!

Note the profusion of cherries!

    In contrast to juneberry, which once joined Nanking cherry in that row along the driveway, Nanking cherries have no significant pest problems. Sometimes branches die back a little but overall production is rarely impacted. In its native haunts, the plants tolerate winter lows of minus 50 degrees F. and summer temperatures soaring to 110 degrees F.
    Mostly I just graze the fruits as I walk up or down my driveway. Last year I harvested enough at once to juice by squeezing them through a strainer. Straight up, one of the most refreshing and delicious juices I’ve ever had.

Pretty Weeds, But They’ve Got to Go

    Warm temperatures and abundant rainfall are giving weeds a heyday. The row of Nanking cherries has become home to two prominent weeds, both ornamental in their own right, but not enough to justify their crowded presence.

A sedate, cultivated variety of Japanese knotweed

A sedate, cultivated variety of Japanese knotweed

    Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica), sometimes called Mexican bamboo, has migrated from a solid stand across the road to the foot of the hedge. The arching stems, heart-shaped leaves, and foaming white flowers, the latter due at the end of summer, explain why the plant was introduced from Asia in the late 1800’s.
    The plants are either male or female, and female plants rarely set seed, making me wonder how the plant got across the street.
    The other weed, bindweed (Convulvulus arvensis), would be as welcome as its well-behaved cousin, morning glory, if, like morning glory, it was an annual, or at least a well-behaved perennial. The flowers look like pale morning glories. Beneath the ground is where bindweed shows its dark side. The perennial roots spread far far and wide, sending up new shoots likewise far and wide from the mother plant, and the plant seeds abundantly.
 

Bindweed flowers among Nanking cherries

Bindweed flowers among Nanking cherries

   Repeatedly cutting back or pulling either weed should eventually starve the roots of either plant, if not eliminating them at least keeping then from smothering the Nanking cherry bushes. That’s pretty much all the care the Nanking cherry hedge needs beyond some pruning every few years to encourage some young growth and keep the shrubs from growing too large.

Excitement in some Seeds

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There’s still some space left in the March 10th lecture/workshop in Philadelphia. In the morning, I’ll do a photo presentation about pruning fruit trees, shrubs, and vines and then, after lunch, we’ll go out into the real world, at the Awbury Arboretum’s Agricultural Village. For more information and for registration for FRUIT PRUNING SIMPLIFIED, please visit:
 http://chestnuthill.patch.com/events/fruit-pruning-simplified-with-lee-reich

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And now, on to what’s happening up here on my farmden in New York’s Hudson Valley . . .
Some inch-long, tapering white sprouts — roots — caused quite a stir today. For me, at least. The first was spotted inside a baggie of moist potting soil that I put in the refrigerator a couple of months ago. That sprout was attached to a marble-sized, brown yellowhorn (Xanthocerus sorbifolia) seed. Giving the bag a shake brought more seeds to the surface, all with emerging sprouts.
The other sprouts were in a Clementine tangerine box that, last summer, I had filled with potting soil in which I had sown seeds of Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa). The box sat outside along the north wall of my house until a couple of weeks ago, when I brought it indoors to warmth.
Without doing time in the cold, whether outdoors or in the refrigerator, neither batch of seeds would have sprouted. They needed, as do many tree and shrub seeds, a period of stratification, that is, time kept cool and moist. After a certain number of hours under these conditions, typically about 800 hours for hardy trees and shrubs, the seeds can sprout unless temperatures are too cold.
I chose my words carefully when I wrote “cool and moist” above; temperatures below freezing contribute nothing to this so-called cooling “bank.” So, outdoors, those Nanking cherry seeds put time into their chilling bank this past autumn and during any of winter’s warmer days. If that time hadn’t been sufficiently long, hours in the “bank” could have been topped up in late winter and early spring.
A refrigerator is just the right temperature for stratification, too right in some ways. The consistently cool temperatures there fill up the chilling bank hours quickly, so quickly that seeds collected in late summer and stratified there often sprout in December, which means indoor planting at a time when growing conditions are at their worst. That’s why my yellowhorn seeds didn’t get a good soaking and then tucked into the bag with potting soil in the refrigerator until late November.
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Forget about the nuts; yellowhorn is worth
growing even just for its flowers
The yellowhorn seeds came from a tree I planted many years ago. I planted it because yellowhorn was billed as a small, hardy tree with a nut very similar to a macadamia nut. Yes, the nut does look like a macadamia, inside and out, and it’s about the same size. But yellowhorn nuts taste nothing like macadamia nuts. The yellowhorn nuts from my tree are barely edible, roasted or raw.
So why am I so excited about the nuts (seeds) sprouting to give me additional plants. Yellowhorn is a beautiful tree with ferny leaves and drooping, large clusters of purple-throated, white flowers that rival and resemble orchids.
Run-of-the-mill, seedling macadamia nuts are not as tasty as named varieties that have been selected over the years. No named varieties of yellowhorn exist. Perhaps a tasty clone may one day be discovered. Perhaps one of the sprouting seeds in my baggie will grow into a tree that will be the one that bears those tasty nuts. 
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Nanking cherry is another story, as far as taste. Like yellowhorn, no named varieties of Nanking cherry exist. But I’ve tasted the fruits, which are small, sweet-tart cherries, from many different plants in many different places over many years, and they all taste good.
Like yellowhorn, Nanking cherry also sports beautiful flowers. Each year in early spring, my Nanking cherry shrubs are drenched in such a profusion of pinkish-white blossoms that you can hardly see the stems.
Nanking cherry stems are hidden behind
the oodles of fruit this plant bears 
Another plus for Nanking cherry is that it is pest-resistant and bears reliably every year. The usual pests of cherries — curculios, fruit flies, brown rot, leaf spots, borers — are insignificant on Nanking cherries. And the plant laughs off extremes of temperature: It’s native where winter lows plummet to minus 50°F and summer highs soar to 110°F, and even though the plants’ blossoms open early in spring, spring frosts are never a problem. Did I mention that the plants also grow quickly and bear young, typically a couple of years after planting?
All this is not to say that Nanking cherry could not be improved. Some selection or breeding could slide flavor more towards the sweeter end of the sweet-tart scale. Larger fruit would be welcome. Mostly, the cherries are a mere one-half to five-eighths inch in diameter.
So last summer I collected seeds from fruits that were a little bigger and a little sweeter than the rest. Those were the seeds I planted in that Clementine tangerine box. I’m going to let these plants grow until warm weather settles in spring, then move them outdoors. In 2 or 3 years, I’ll be sampling fruits from these seedlings. I’ll save and plant some seeds from shrubs bearing the largest and tastiest fruits, and plant them. Perhaps I’ll eventually have some better Nanking cherries. At the very least, I’ll have lots of them. 

EASY CHERRIES AND A GREEN ROOF

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My Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) made a lot of people happy this year. Joy was first spread in early April as thousands of pinkish white flowers burst open along the stems, enough to almost completely hide the stems. Passers-by enjoyed the hedge of plants, which run along the driveway; some people even asked about the name of the plant.
In early June, the blossoms morphed into small, red cherries, oodles and oodles of them. Now, the end of June as I write, just a few cherries still cling to the stems. Throughout the month of June, though, friends, strangers, relatives, birds, chipmunks, and creatures unseen feasted on the abundance.
Nanking cherries are admittedly small and somewhat hard to harvest because they cling closely to the stems on short stalks, but these two deficiencies are far offset by the care the plants need. Almost none! Every few years, I whack back some stems that become decrepit or send the plant high or wide out of bounds.. And I usually spread wood chips or leaves beneath the bushes as mulch to suppress weeds and conserve soil moisture. But neither of these minor tasks is absolutely necessary.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Nanking cherries is that there are no improved varieties. That is, they are all random seedlings, each a genetic individual. Yet they all taste good, ranging in flavor and texture, depending on the individual, from almost sweet to sour cherry. (Compare this to wild apples, which pretty much all taste bad; the good-tasting apples that we have are the result of hundreds of years of selection and breeding.) Nanking cherry fruits are small, as are the wild cherries from which cultivated cherries are derived.
One of my bushes yields cherries that are slightly larger, slightly firmer and, hence, easier to harvest, and slightly sweeter than my other 10 or so bushes. Seeds from that bush didn’t get spit on the ground; I collected them for planting. Nanking cherry bushes bear fruit within a couple of years and repeated selection of plants bearing the best fruits could result in bigger and better fruits. Improvements might also come from widening the genetic input with pollen from a wider range of Nanking cherry individuals and even some related species, such as sweet cherry. The combination of Nanking cherry’s tolerance to winter cold, late spring frosts, and insect and disease pests and sweet cherry’s fruit size, sweeter flavor, and firmness would make a plant that was easy to grow with even tastier fruits.
I’ll report back in years to come. For now, run-of-the-mill Nanking cherry is well worth growing and another perfect fruit for ambulant consumption on the way to the front door or to the mailbox at the end of the driveway.
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I have a good excuse for the weediness of one of my gardens: It’s on a roof, not an area I frequently walk past with the opportunity to pull a few weeds. I would have to get a ladder and, because this garden is not to be walked on,  reach in as far as possible. I don’t weed it.
This garden is a “green roof” covering a front porch. Green roofs absorb rainfall and the sun’s heat, insulate whatever is below, and look — well — green and alive. The last reason prompted my roof planting about ten years ago.
Original hens-and-chicks laid on roof
But first I had to build the porch roof. Construction was standard — oak posts and crossbeam with 2 by 8 joists covered by 1 by 6 planks — except for the covering of rubber roofing bonded to copper flashing provided with weep holes at the lower end. Planting was begun the year before with hens and chicks (Sempervivum spp.) in seedling flats filled with a mix of equal parts peat moss and calcined montmorillonite clay (the latter also known as “kitty litter). That spring I snuggled the flats next to each other on the roof. Setting flats on the roof intact would, and did, prevent rainfall from washing the planting mix and plants down the slope, the angle of which was determined mostly by aesthetics. I wanted the top of the roof just visible from the driveway.
The goal was for the hens and chicks to make more chicks, and those chicks to make even more chicks, spreading to make a dense, blue-green mat over the surface and draping over the lower eave. They didn’t spread thoroughly or fast enough.
Angelina now filling in the roof
It takes a tough plant to survive and grow on this roof. The soil mix is only a couple of inches deep so plant roots are exposed to the full brunt of winter cold and summer heat, and the roof gets only natural rainfall. Because hens and chicks weren’t fully up to the task, I started planting other succulents to fill in bare areas amongst the hens and chicks.
Over the years, the most successful of these plants has been Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’. Not only does ‘Angelina’ survive and grow under the austere conditions, but she also looks pretty year ‘round. Right now, the plant is a trailing mat of fleshy, pointed, pale green leaves up through which push foot-high shoots capped with clusters of yellow flowers. In fall and winter, the leaves take on an amber hue. The plants root very easily to furnish new ones to fill in the few remaining bare spots. I pluck off pieces of shoots and toss them back onto the roof to eventually root and spread. Very convenient. 
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It’s hard to imagine how weeds have gotten onto my green roof, let alone survive. Birds and wind, no doubt, got the plants there. The weeds include fleabanes and some grasses. Some people tell me that these “weeds” look pretty up on the roof, so maybe they’re not weeds. The fleabanes, now in bloom, hold their white, daisy-like flowers high above those of ‘Angelina’. And, if nothing else, both weeds . . . whoops, I mean plants . . . hold the soil in place as ‘Angelina’ continues to spread.
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