Little Susie Homemaker

Tag: boysenberry

  • Garden – June 2025

    My garden is growing!

    I wasn’t sure how things would work with being gone at the wrong times this year, but thankfully things seem to be chugging along.

    Some things are just plain slow, and I need to do some education to figure out why (beets – yeah, you!!). And some things are plugging along as expected and should be ready to harvest on time soon (peas – way to go babies!!)

    Asparagus, Cauliflower and Volunteer Potato
    Peas, Kale, Black Beans, Cucumber, Spinach, Lettuce
    Beans, Beets

    In the main garden, I have a couple of volunteer potatoes. I didn’t buy seed potatoes this year. I had a couple of potatoes from last year that had sprouted. There was also a leftover store-bought organic russet that I used as well. Time will tell how any of those turn out.

    I’ve tried planting things more interspersed to not waste space, but also to hopefully have things that help one another. Since beets prefer cooler weather, I’ve planted bush beans in between the row of beets.

    (Maybe I should take a gardening class – its all one big experiment)

    The berries that line one side of the main garden are all doing well. The Logan Berries skipped last year but appear to be a bumper crop this year. Tayberries are already ripening. And the Boysenberry has a lot of blossoms.

    First Tayberry harvest
    Boysenberry
    Logan Berry
    Tayberry

    The side garden is doing well. We added a hog panel as a trellis. The tubers, squash and cucumbers all need something to climb. I planted zucchini, yellow summer squash as well as spaghetti squash and delicata squash. Thankfully, at least 1 of each one has come up.

    Cucumbers are planted along both sides of the trellis.

    My hubby planted about 4x more tubers this year. Now to figure out how to cook them properly to eat them!

    The side yard also has most of the rhubarb, raspberries and the biggest, more prolific blueberry bushes. The raspberries are beginning to ripen, and I picked the first one last night.

    Blueberries and Rhubarb
    Squash(es), Cucumbers and Tubers
    Raspberry

    A couple other random things that are coming along – the black currants and honey berries are almost ready to harvest.

    The main potatoes are in a pot and doing really well! I can’t wait for the blossoms! Have you ever smelled a potato blossom? Seriously, why has no one ever come up with using that scent??

    Goji berries are going crazy and starting to ripen. The quince tree has lots of little quince growing. And the tomatoes are in the ground. (I have basil and parsley planted nearby. These were from seed so they’re VERY behind)

    Black Currants
    Goji Berries
    Honey Berries
    Pepper and Potato
    Quince
    Tomatoes

    The flowers throughout the yard are beautiful and doing well. The peonies are just about finished up. The allium look gorgeous. And the sedum I planted in the fall from the neighbor are all doing well.

    Alpine strawberries are ripening. I took a couple of shoots last year and managed to keep two of them alive over winter. I’ve planted those near the asparagus as they’re supposed to be great companion plants.

    Allium
    Alpine Strawberries
    Sedum

    For missing April and getting things started, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. I’m gearing up for the July harvest as the blueberries ripen up.

    I’m hoping to harvest 100 lbs. If I get that much, great. If I don’t, that’s great too!

  • Berries in bloom

    “Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.” Bubba from Forrest Gump

    When someone asks what berries we have in the backyard, I suddenly feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump when I start listing out all the berries we have.

    My husband loves having unique plants in the back, plus things that will flower that the hummingbirds, mason bees and other neighborhood bees can eat from. We have quite a variety in the back yard.

    Before I met him, he’d walk around the backyard in the summer and have dessert. Now that I live here, I harvest the berries for us to fully enjoy through the year.

    In fact, I still have 1 bag of raspberries from last year and just opened the last bag of strawberries that I picked at a nearby farm.

    I love the idea of having an edible yard with a lot of things that come back every year. Seeing how my vegetables are extremely pathetic (its old seeds – at least that what’s I’m claiming), having perennial plants around help with the overall harvest.

    This is the first spring that I’m paying much attention to the blossoming and ripening of the berries instead of just the harvesting!

    Here is where our berries are at beginning(ish) of June!

    The earliest to harvest are honey berries, or haskaps.

    Honey berries, or haskaps, are the first to ripen in June. They grow under the leaves and look like an elongated blueberry. I find them very tart and pick them, freeze them and then throw them into smoothies over the winter. But it is fun to have something non-rhubarb to harvest early in the season.

    Next up are blueberries which are already starting to ripen and turn colors. (do you see that bit of pink in the picture below?)

    This year, we have 2 new blueberry plants which are pink lemonade blueberries. They will be pink when ripe, so I think it may be a “by taste” test to know when they’re ripe. (that is an affiliate link)

    One of the fun berries we grow, but they are a bear to harvest are the evergreen huckleberries.

    These are actually pretty easy to harvest, but you end up picking up a ton of debris as you do it. It’s the cleaning that is really the chore. But, these are fun tiny little berries, like miniature blueberries. I have gotten almost a gallon zip bag full the last 2 years. That leaves plenty of berries on the plants for the birds to pick at too!

    We are in the second year of transplanted ever-bearing raspberries. I pruned them back in the early spring just as leaves were starting and pulled out all the canes that weren’t growing any. Ever-bearing will produce a spring AND a fall crop (first year canes vs. second year canes). After the second-year canes produce, those canes have finished their lifecycle.

    You can see the berries starting to grow from where the blossoms were. They’re so cute!

    I love strawberries (as an adult). Growing up, my parents had a small u-pick strawberry patch, so of course I had to help pick berries. At the time, I hated strawberries. Boy am I glad my tastebuds changed with age!

    I have a spot in the yard that is fairly shaded, so we have planted alpine strawberry varieties (mignonette). They’re fairly novel and oh so tiny, but I’m looking forward to eating the couple of tiny berries these will produce. (that’s an affiliate link)

    (They are surrounded by chicken wire to keep the bunnies out!)

    One of the berries that I’m surprised at how much I like are boysenberries. Think huge, long blackberries!!! I made jam with them last year, both by itself and in a triple berry blend. I also threw them in a bag in the freezer as I harvested them (at least the ones my husband didn’t eat right as I brought them inside) along with tayberries & loganberries for a mixed berry blend. (affiliate link above)

    We have several other kinds not listed or shown. “We have blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries, honey berries, tayberries, logan berries, goji berries, lingonberries, huckleberries, strawberries. That’s all I have to say about that!” ~Little Susie Homemaker