Viewing comments posted by molanic

This has to be on of my favorite native plants, but it seems really hard to get a photo that captures how nice it is in person. It has such a nice texture to run your hand through, good fall color, and very pretty delicate panicles. In the fall I see juncos jump up in the air to try and get the seeds. Some say it smells like buttered popcorn or coriander, but I don't notice that too much. Maybe it's more apparent if you have large areas of it. It seems like the neighborhood cats really like it for some reason. They frequently sit on it, or flop on their sides to bunny kick it and shred it with their feet or chew on it. I've seen several different cats do this over the years. It divides well and I've also started some from seed... although it takes several years to get a good sized clump from seed.

From what I've read you can differentiate Morus alba from Morus rubra by looking at the the top and bottom texture of the leaves. Morus alba leaves are glossy on top and not fuzzy on the underside. The fruit color and leaf shape are very variable though. Morus alba usually has white or light pink fruits when ripe, but some varieties like Morus alba tatarica (Russian Mulberry) turn black. The fruit of Morus alba are usually a lot shorter than those of Morus rubra also.

Grown for the first time in 2019. The first fruits got huge, see the photo of the 24 oz one. They didn't do very well for us, although maybe they didn't like our weather. Most had very under ripe tops while the bottoms ripened up and starting to get mushy while still on the vine. They also seemed to split a lot. I brought a couple in to eat and found the texture very mealy and flavor lacking. Maybe it was too much rain for these big tender skinned varieties. The cherries and smaller slicers didn't split at all this year.

This is a newer June-bearing variety that I planted in 2018, so 2019 was the first year I harvested from it. The plants seem healthy so far, although fresh strawberry plantings usually are. I got these to replace my favorite strawberry variety Honeoye which wasn't doing so well anymore. Flavorfest is supposed to be a bit more disease resistant.

The early Flavorfest berries were huge and somewhat irregular shaped and not as red to the center like the Honeoye. The flavor was pretty good, but I still prefer the Honeoye ones. I'll have to see how they perform going forward.

I have both the 'Blue Muffin' and 'Autumn Jazz' cultivars of V. dentatum. I have read they are not self-fertile and you need another variety (or the straight species) blooming at the same time nearby in order to get berries. These two varieties work well together in this way here. I have also seen 'Chicago Lustre' listed as a good companion pollinator. The 'Blue Muffin' has a more rounded and compact shape than the 'Autumn Jazz', and the listed mature size is also smaller. The fall color and berry production is very similar between the two.

Robins get most of the berries here, but I imagine many other birds would like them too because they are small and easy to eat. One year I had a hummingbird clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) lay eggs on this viburnum, and I got to raise them to adulthood which was really cool.

Based on the name I was expecting this variety to have superior fall color, but they have always been very muted and not any different than my Arrowwood Viburnum 'Blue Muffin'. 'Autumn Jazz' has a more sprawling wild shape than 'Blue Muffin' which is quite rounded and more compact.

I got these two varieties because I had read that they are not self-fertile and that you need two different varieties that will bloom at the same time. In that respect they work well together and both set fruit.

This is my favorite strawberry I've grown so far. The fruits are juicy, sweet, fairly uniform in size and shape, and red and fleshy to the center. They are vigorous and make good runners. The flavor easily beat out the two ever-bearing varieties I tried - Seascape and Mara des Bois. Honeoye had a slight edge over the June-bearer Cavendish, which sometimes produced over-sized fruit with empty spaces and a lot of white inside. The only bad comment I have about Honeoye is the name.... how the heck is it pronounced! Every time I try to say it I look stupid, and when I write it I have to double check that I did it right.

This link is..... not very helpful, unfortunately.
https://www.howtopronounce.com...

These were the first strawberries I grew and they performed well. The plants were vigorous and plenty hardy... it is a Canadian variety. The berries were large and either conical or wedge shaped, with good flavor. After several years of growing these I decided to try another well reviewed June-bearer, Honeoye. I prefer Honeoye because the berries have a little better flavor and were more uniform in shape/size overall and red throughout. Sometime the largest Cavendish looked great on the outside, but when you cut them open there was quite a bit of white or partially empty cavities inside.

One year I got three new varieties of strawberries to try at once: Seascape, Mara des Bois , and Honeoye. After a couple of years I kept Honeoye and removed the other two. Mara des Bois was supposed to be THE strawberry to try with rave reviews talking about complex flavors. It definitely tasted different, but it was not a flavor anyone I gave it to particularly liked. I found it to have a pretty strong floral taste that I did not like. It was like eating a strawberry while smelling perfume. It seemed to do all right production-wise for an ever-bearing variety, but nobody really wanted to eat them unless they were mixed in with other berries to dilute the "perfume" like scent.

One year I got three new varieties of strawberries to try at once: Seascape, Mara des Bois , and Honeoye. After a couple of years I kept Honeoye and removed the other two. Seascape is not June bearing, so I wasn't expecting large numbers of berries, just small amounts throughout the season. But, the plants were not very vigorous and the fruit was quite small, round, and not very appetizing looking. The flavor was bland without much sweetness and juiciness. They were well reviewed by others, but perhaps these just don't perform well in my climate or soil. I have also read that the June-bearers like Honeoye just have better flavor in general, so maybe that is why I didn't like the other two.

Once this plant got to a mature size, it produced so much fruit that the weight pulled heavily on the branches as seen in the one picture I submitted. It ended up splayed out, crushing nearby plants. Birds don't usually eat the berries until they are overripe and shriveling. In recent years I have been thinning out the amount of fruit on the branches before the berries get large enough to weigh down the branches. That way it maintains a more upright tidy appearance. Perhaps a gardener more experienced with pruning could prevent this also. On a positive note, it produces many many large berries for anyone looking to use them.

Mine has still not gotten over two feet tall after many years. I have read it may have a preference for very moist but well drained acidic soil and mine is more alkaline with a clay base. Perhaps that stunts the growth a bit. I used to have it in a fairly dry area, but have moved it to the edge of a rain garden in full sun which made it fill out a little more. It also regularly has some die-back after winter that I prune off, but I am in zone 5... which is the coldest it can handle apparently.

I got this to replace the 'Victoria' variety, which always bolted early for me and produced very large, green, and tough stalks. 'Crimson Red' seems to have smaller more tender stems that are often quite red throughout. I think it also helped that I relocated the rhubarb to a location with warmer and more well drained soil. I think this benefits from frequent dividing also.

This is the first rhubarb variety I tried. It grew well, but sent up flower stalks very early in the season every year. I always cut them off to send more energy to the leaves, but that left mushy openings that rotted. The almost solid green stalks got very large and tough quickly. I ended up replacing it with the 'Crimson Red' variety.

I bought this as a bare-root plant. It seemed to be healthy and put on a lot of growth the first two years. The fruits were smaller than expected and not very tasty, but they may not have been fully ripe, and I had no other gooseberry experience to compare them to. After the second or third winter a lot of the shrub had died back and it didn't look too good anymore, so I ended up taking it out.

Had this fruiting for a few years in Zone 5. They sure look very tasty, but I don't think I've managed to taste a fully ripe one yet. The raccoons really seem to love them though! The Japanese beetles rate them quite highly also.

Northland blueberry has made it through seven winters planted in a half whiskey barrel in zone 5b. The other two varieties I planted that first year died over the first and second winter because they weren't cold hardy enough...lesson learned. Rule of thumb, go AT LEAST two zones colder to overwinter above ground. Their replacements (Elliot & Bluecrop) were sunken in the ground. Northland is by far the best producer of the three. They are all planted in a homemade container mix of 5 parts pine bark, 1 part perlite, 1 part peat, with added gypsum. Once in a while I give them some Miracid, but am not very regular about it. Frankly, I am kind of surprised they are still alive and fruiting. All three are much smaller than usual... probably from my lack of care or from being in containers. Our native soil is heavy with a clay base and alkaline, so I didn't even try growing them in the ground. The fall color on Northland and Bluecrop is amazing. If my soil was right I would plant them everywhere.