Even casual gardeners are familiar with the traditional small fruits for western Oregon – the summer sweetness of strawberries, the pleasant tartness of raspberries, the late summer-fall abundance of grapes, and the classic Pacific Northwest delights of blueberries and blackberries.
And only slightly less well known are some very traditional cooking and processing fruits such as currants, elderberries, and gooseberries.
But we can also grow a surprising variety of more unusual small fruits, providing a range of flavors and textures not usually available in grocery stores or farmers markets. Here are a few examples you might try:
Lingonberry – Scandinavian delights, these very cold-tolerant small evergreen shrubs produce small tart and tangy berries often used in sauces or jams.
Honeyberry – A little-known edible shrub in the honeysuckle family, very cold hardy. Fruits are very early in the summer, and taste like a cross of blueberry and raspberry.
Mulberry – If you have space and mess tolerance, there fruiting mulberry trees, but some of the new shrub forms, such as ‘Mojo Berry’, are more manageable. Fruits look like longer blackberries, taste is similar but sweeter – eat fresh, dry them, or make into desserts or jams.
Chilean Guava – Small evergreen shrub with tiny leaves. Hardy to about 10 F, may need some protection in coldest winters. Small guavas are sweet and fruity like strawberries, but with a distinctive tart or tropical complexity.
Pineapple Guava – Nice big evergreen shrub, plenty hardy for western Oregon – but we barely have enough heat to actually ripen fruit, so plant in warm sheltered location (up against a south wall, for example). Pineapple guavas have a very tropical flavor, something like lime or pineapple over faintly berry flavors; and the flowers are quite edible, with large fleshy petals that are sweet and fruity tasting.
Interested to know what we have in stock right now? You can view our live inventory of fruiting plants here, or give us at call at 541-929-3524.