Comments on: 17 Hardy Fruits That You Can Grow On The Prairies

By: Rob Spencer

Rob Spencer — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:12:07 +0000

I agree that fruit has come a long way and that there are more options out there than ever before. I’d clarify / question the cranberry choice. We can do Highbush cranberry, but the cranberry that we all think of (Ocean Spray, cranberry sauce, etc)is the bog cranberry and I don’t think that we can really do that one here. The Highbush is nice looking, and has nice fruit, but they have pits, I believe, so more of a juice/jelly kind of fruit.

By: Dave R

Dave R — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:49:00 +0000

Thank you for the link. I have downloaded the pdf and will get a better look at it in the next day or two. I considered growing my own rootstock however I did not want to wait for another year or more to get some rootstock actively growing. Plus getting 100 of my own would take some doing so I thought I would get a jump this way. I do agree with you however and I think I might propagate my own root stocks now both for economics and for better root stock. The other bonus is I wouldn’t have to deal with 100 at a time. My bad.
Regards,
Dave R.

By: MikeH

MikeH — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:26:46 +0000

If all goes well I want to order another 100 plugs

Produce your own – http://portageperennials.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/apple-rootstock/

Regards,
Mike

By: Dave R

Dave R — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:40:06 +0000

Well I was asked about an update on my little orchard. We have been busy with our regular lives, farming and building a new shop so life has been a wee bit hectic. I am considering starting my own “apple” blog for a couple of reasons. I believe that my journey to creating my own apple orchard should have value for others that are either considering doing it or are doing it. They could learn from my mistakes and perhaps avoid them and perhaps learn from my successes as well. I just do not want to get into the whole “make a website” thing so will try and find a suitable host.
I currently have 15 apple trees of various varieties. Some varieties I have been grafting on some root stock from a crabapple my parents had back in the 1070′s which I am told is, in all likelihood, a Siberian Crab. Regardless it is tough as nails, thumbs its nose at harsh Alberta winters, grazing by moose and deer and the clumsy grafting and pruning attempts of a beginning apple grower. I have been propagating it and transplanting it and have several grafts on them.
I have also been grafting on to and from a Dolgo Crab and a Harding Crab both planted here in the 1970′s. The Harding Crab has been the better tree never suffering a winter die back or disease issues despite being virtually ignored for the first 20 years of its life.
The apple varieties I am currently growing are:
Norland – very prolific, easy to grow, lots of apples which are tasty when fresh. They drop easily and do not keep well. Usually the first to ripen here
September Ruby – Mine are smaller, red, tart with a tougher skin. They ripen in the middle of September here. The moose have beaten my trees up badly for the past few years despite my best efforts however I managed to protect my trees this past winter and will do so again in 2011.
Goodland – I rellay like this apple and the few that I have eaten were great. I like tart crisp apples and this one is great. The tree got some kind of bark scab this spring and I had to prune it way back in an attempt tp get rid of the scab so no fruit from it for a couple of years. I did plant another one at the far edge of my yard in hopes of speeding up the process.
Parkland – Nice little apple, good eating. We had hail this year and the hail beat the apples up pretty badly so it would be unfair for me to say much about this apple
Norkent – I have not had any apple from this tree yet. It was also affected by that bark scab and I had to prune it back although nowhere near as severely as the Goodland apple.
Odyssey – Another victim of the bark scab and I have not had any fruit from it yet.
Harelred – For whatever reason this tree did not have any bark scab on it even though it is between two trees that did get it. No fruit yet but the tree is growing well.
Battleford – This is an old variety and I planted it more for experimentation than anything else. No fruit yet but no damage yet either.
I bought 100 Siberian Crab rooted plugs from Alta Nursery Bowden this spring. My plan was to put them in pots until I could get a chance to plant them properly. To be absolutely blunt this was a bad idea and I won’t be doing it again. We had a crappy summer with lots of rain so almost drowned most of the plugs. Then we protected them from the rain and they promptly dried out and I lost some to drought. The micro-environment of the large pots – 5 gallon pails – is just too sensitive to climate changes unless you are prepared to work with them every day and with our farm etc we were just too busy. I am fall planting them as I write this and will water them in well before the frost gets in the ground.
My plan is to obtain some of the new U of S apple varieties and graft them onto the 100 Siberian crabs and any of my own apple varieties that I take a shine to as well. If all goes well I want to order another 100 plugs again although I am not sure if I will go back to Alta Nurseries at Bowden. Some of the rooted plugs I received were no bigger than 8 inches long and about as thick as telephone cord at best and the wind could easily blow them off my transplanting table.
My Haskap are growing, and that is about all I can say for them. No fruit, no blossoms and growth is painfully slow despite being next to the garden and getting regular care. I have the Borealis, Berry Blue and Northern Jewel varieties. The Borealis I have had for a couple of years the Berry Blue and Northern Jewel are new this year. I purchased the later two from Alta Nurseries at Bowden as well and unfortunately, while they do ship two varieties, they failed to mark which one was which and I sort of wanted to know.
My U of S cherries were a mixed bag of success. No fruit, two bushed died over winter and two survived. I protected them from the deer and moose by covering them so the die off could have been my own fault.
My currants are growing well despite taking a beating from the deer over winter. I did not get any fruit this year due to the damage but they are healthy and growing with no signs of disease….yet…knock on wood.
We are making long term plans – 2 to 3 years – to put up an 8 foot game fence around our home area of approx 10 acres. The hope is this will end of deer/moose problems as well as prevent some of the predators from coming in the yard. This should reduce the amount of work required to protect our trees and shrubs, help the fruit trees and shrubs to produce better and alleviate some of our concerns over walking out our door into the path of bears/cougar/coyote etc.
Sorry for writing a book here.
Regards
Dave R.

By: Janet

Janet — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:32:45 +0000

Hello again everyone. Apologies for my “post and run” last March. I got busy with my Peace River garden, preserving the produce I had someone in Manning custom grow for me, my “little” potato patch at a friends acreage out at Three Creeks plus looking for more land.
It’s been a beautiful gardening weekend and I have MUCH to do but am moving slow due to a cold/fever and need a rest so here I am. This is the first part of my To-Do list: finish soaker/drip hose on carrots & cukes, straw mulch cukes, make 5 more tomato cages from concrete re-wire, finish thinning carrots, try a replant of beets, hill & straw mulch the potatoes, get plastic tunnels or wall ‘o water over the peppers to give them some more heat and get a batch of aerated compost tea started. Then I have more trees and shrubs to plant – but not in my Peace River garden. It’s too full.
So, before I get into a full report, let me reply to those of you who asked questions… BTW, it is GREAT to see all the northern Alberta gardeners on here – not that I don’t enjoy hearing from all of you but northern gardeners seem to be a rare species on gardening websites.
Dave, thanks for the encouragement re: growing/blogging. My challenge is time. Maybe if I could figure out how to clone myself…. My Issai kiwis bit the dust this winter. The male was struggling last year and didn’t come back in the spring. One female succumbed to an unidentified pest this spring, the other was limping along so I yanked her out. I think I have them in a bad location – not enough sun or air, though well sheltered from wind. I did learn over the winter that the Issai kiwis are supposed to be bi-sexual, despite the labels they come with. I just purchased 3 replacements (Canadian Tire end-of-season sale) – All are “Arctic Beauties” (Actinidia kolomikta), one male & two females. I’ll put in the ground for the year – deep sun – then move to my new property next spring. I’ll keep you posted. I’d popped a common honeysuckle in the male kiwi place last spring and it’s doing fabulously. The bees love it and the orange/yellow blossoms are a nice little pop of color.
OTOH, my Valiant grape is looking awesome – many drupes of pinhead size grapes. It was a bit slow to get started this spring so I was nervous for it and didn’t prune them as hard as I should/could have. Last fall, I harvested 4 gallon pails last year. I juice like making jelly juice then can it without sugar in jars. To serve I mix in agave nectar or simple syrup then add as much soda water as juice and ice. Yummy stuff. Unfortunately, my sister killed her luscious grape vine. Didn’t snow cover it and walked on it all winter.
T. Wilson, did you get some grapes and kiwis planted? As long as they are are in a real sunny location (they even like south west), are protected a bit from north wind and get lots of snow cover they should do fine. I really think the added bonus of being next to the concrete is good for mine so would recommend a good rock mulch. I’m totally envious of your pomegranetes and figs. How much light do they need indoors. I have a pretty good houseplant jungle with one window that gets sun from 10 am-4pm year round. Do you think that would work? What varieties of each do you have? Anyone growing anything else indoors? Meyer lemons? Guavas?
Rob Read, you’d asked about the Trebizond date. Neither supplier was able to deliver the goods last year. Turned out the first supplier (Mr. V’s from Smoky Lake, AB) shipped a regular old Mountain Ash, not the “Shipova” promised. I was more vigilant with the second supplier (from the west coast – can’t remember the name). I phoned and had them check the Latin name and sure ‘nuff… another Mountain Ash. I have found a Canadian supplier – the Green Barn Nursery in Montreal http://www.greenbarnnursery.ca. Shipovas are sold out for this year but they have a number of exotics I’d like to trial for planting spring, 2012 on my new property.
Thanks for the goji info, Babka. How you got them growing? Where are you located? And thanks to you, too, Carissa. I did see Shallow Creek sold their nursery. How are your goji’s growing? My nut tree report for June, 2011 is:
Beaked hazelnut is doubled in size from last year. It had about 10 blossoms this year (tiny dark pink things stuck tight to the branch) but without a pollinator, none fruited. Surprisingly, the marauding deer left it alone. They girdled the young mountain ash beside it shortly after I posted last year. Killed it (although I learned about a grafting procedure called “bridge grafting” that I’ll try if I have another similar girdling event). The deer also leave the ‘Pixwell” gooseberry alone. It, too has doubled in size and has about 2 cups of berries ripening. My friend Brad (whose mother custom grew veggies for me last year) says his family farm in Manning, AB had a grove of wild beaked hazelnuts. I’ve got another that is waiting for planting out. The butternut tree was at my sister’s place and her dog chewed on it and killed it last summer (different sister than grape vine sister). I’m not sure it would be hardy here anyway, but I like to experiment.
Two of the blueberry bushes are bumping along, surviving but not really looking pert. One succumbed to a spider mite attack. The haskap bushes are doing incredible. One set a huge number of blossoms but didn’t have a pollinating buddy so again, no fruit. The others blossomed later and lesser. I’ve got more of those in pots to be set out, too. I’d stuck a Cornelian cherry (Cornus mass) in the ground when I planted the haskaps not realizing it will grow huge (15’ x 20’). I’ll need to move it but will wait for spring as they don’t care for fall transplanting. It’s really a kind of dogwood which I chose because birds and squirrels love the fruits. I figure I need to do something to keep them fed, happy and away from my edibles.
Speaking of cherries, my Evans didn’t make it through the late frosts last year. It was all budded up, then we got 3 days of really hard (-7C) frost and that was that. I chipped the branches and trunk and used the chips for smoking meats on the BBQ all summer. Not quite as nice as apple but okay. I have a replacement Evans for the new property. My sister (the grape one) gave me several suckers of her Nanking cherry shrub late last spring. They survived all year crammed helter-skelter into a pot, watered only when they looked pitiful wilted then survived in the same pot all winter. This spring I crammed them as a bundle into a flower bed – temporary (hah!). The darn things are growing like blazed. Must add that to my To-Do list… pot up those Nankings for the new property.
The “Sweetheart” cherry is doing excellent despite us snapping several branches off over the winter with too-casual snow throwing and too-rambunctious dog-play. I’m going to try moving that little tree this fall when I plant it’s playmates (now in pots) on the new place. I’ve got a “Romeo” and an “SK Carmine”.
Dave R., did you get started on your demo orchard? I’d be keen to hear what and how you’ve sited your plantings. I’ve been immersed in learning about permaculture design for the last year. Permaculture brings together everything I’ve been learning for the last 30 years of gardening –very awesome. Choosing the right plant for the right site is an important element so I think you are on the right path. Another permaculture technique is planting in “guilds”, choosing those plants and trees whose needs and strengths complement each other. It is the basis of planning and planting. At the end of July I’m taking a course with Jude Hobbs in Oregon on designing edible food forests. There is a lot of info on spacing trees, under and cover planting, etc. I can give you book titles and articles if you are interested.
What kinds of apples do you have, Dave R? Do you have any of those old-fashioned yellow transparent apples? I think they were originally from Russia. Do you know if they sucker or will graft? I’m also curious about your currants. Do you have any problems with mildew or viruses? Do you grow clove currants? I’m looking for info and tips on them. Also, jostaberries, which I understand are a gooseberry/red currant cross.
The two year old Norland in my Peace River yard almost died this winter. Two things happened: First it developed a sunscald on the main trunk. The bark got rough and black, started splitting. Then in February, my daughter’s dog gnawed off three of the largest lower branches. Come April it didn’t look very good at all – not leafed out when the Golden Pear had leaves the size of quarters. I trimmed up the chewed branches. I was going to dig it out but decided to treat it biodynamically. I made a tea of dried calendula blossoms and rainwater, let it cool then poured it slowly over the sunscald/crack. I fed it a seaweed fertilizer and sprinkled Azomite on the soil in the grow area. It’s rebounded nicely, all leafed out and even blossomed a couple of clusters on the highest branches. I think it might make it. I’ll give it a drink of aerated compost tea when I get it brewed.
I’ve now got a Norland, a Norkent and a September Ruby in pots waiting for the guy with the subsoiler to do his thing on my new property so they can be planted.
I’ve mentioned this new property a few times. It’s quite a little story – the replacement for the 5-acre river plot I bought in January, 2010 (the one I mentioned in my last post). When the snow melted last spring (right after I posted), I went out to my new property, planting plans in hand, all excited to do soil samples so I could get started planting trees and root veggies even before I started building. Turns out I’d bought me a gravel pit. Beautiful building site, magnificent view of the Peace river and hills, mature spruce building site and NOT ONE TEASPOON OF SOIL!!
So, it was back to the drawing board – or rather the real estate book, having learned an expensive lesson. I took a crash course in digging pits and doing field soil samples, tracked down the soil maps for the area and spend last summer shopping – again. I found a chunk of bare land in the village of Berwyn – almost a half acre, never-been-turned prairie sod, at the edge of town. Then I spent the winter learning and planning. And, like the true growing fanatic that I am, I bought 9 trees and 14 shrubs before I’ve turned the soil or even finalized building plans. I shouldn’t be allowed to set foot in a nursery or greenhouse – too dangerous for my bank account!
That gravel pit purchase was also the reason I grew 670# of potatoes at my friend’s acreage in Three Creeks last year. I’d ordered 10# of these varieties of potato seeds: fingerlings (Banana, French, Peanut) and full-size (Caribe, Sangre, Russet Burbank, German Butterball). Everyone who visited me between October and March went home with a sack of potatoes. I still have about 20# of peanut fingerlings fit to eat.
Mike, I resonate with your goal of sustainability. My plan for the Berwyn property is to offer my garden/edible forest as a demonstration and education site. I’d like to share what I know with others as I learn myself because I believe that one day we won’t be able to rely on food arriving to our doors on a slick of petroleum transport the way it does now. I also like eating wholesome and healthy, which I suspect many of you do as well. So much tastier, hmmm?
So…other food trees on my Peace River property (where I’m still living and gardening) are doing well…Golden Pear (ussurian), elderberry (sambucus) – cut back to a stump 2 years ago and letting regrow due to a virus on the old wood, chokecherry (wild), pincherry & several new 6’ high suckers, currant bushes (doing okay but need more sun), raspberries (loaded with fruit). Didn’t get that apricot but did get a Shagbark Hickory from Grimo Nuts. Mr. Grimo said it didn’t need a pollinator but others say it does so I’ll need to move it and find a mate. It’s a 3’ tall stick with a frizz of leaves right now.
I also have a HUGE aspen, polar bear willow, Amur maple, larch and several decorative shrubs (viburnum, yellow-twig dogwood, hansa rose, morden rose, Jacque Cartier and another Explorer rambling rose, mock orange, spirea. Sheesh, no wonder I need more land.
Suzanne, I’ve been thinking about your orchard/garden and wondering how it’s doing with all the rain we’ve been having. Things look so lush this year.
Well, I’m rested up now and ready for another go outdoors. Gonna get those carrots thinned before dark, and maybe the potatoes hilled. Supposed to rain tomorrow.
If any of you are ever in Peace River, give me an email and we’ll arrange a garden tour. Nothing I love better than trading stories and tips with growing addicts like myself.
(sorry for the giant post, Dave. Thanks for sharing your space)

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:32:28 +0000

Suzanne: Give them a few weeks and give us an update. Somethings just take awhile to ‘come back to life’ each spring!

By: suzanne

suzanne — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:07:53 +0000

Hi,
I live near Fairview, AB and am just starting to get into fruit and nut trees. Last year I got one apple tree, one crabapple tree, some kiwi trees, 2 valient grapes, and 3 different cherry trees and the haskapp and a hazelnut from t &t seeds.
unfortunatly only my polinator for the hakskapp lived last summer and looks ok this year. My Hazelnut is showing signs of life as are my apple trees and the cherry trees are barely showing sings of life. Should I have covered them for the winter or am i doing something else wrong? I do live on an immature acreage that is essentially a field and don’t have wind cover.
Janet, if you are about, I would love to see what you have done, and hear about your experience. If interested let me know, suzy_hale@yahoo.ca.

I was also wondering if anyone knows how to propagate the haskap. (i am a very new gardener)

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:10:41 +0000

Cecilia: I think I would try to plant four strawberries per square foot. That might be a litte tight, but that’s what I would do.

By: Cecilia

Cecilia — Sun, 01 May 2011 15:09:33 +0000

Thanks for the reply Dave, how many plants per square should I plant? Thanks again!

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:41:23 +0000

Cecilia: Strawberries would be great in a SFG. As for raspberries, you either need some sort of edging that would go in the soil to keep the roots from spreading, or regular pruning would work ask well.