Do you grow fruit trees or berry bushes?

[mythreesons290322]

I grow a fruit orchard along with many different berry bushes..

I preserve or eat fresh as much as I can from them. I mostly like to can pie fillings, dehydrate, make juice and make jams or jellies.

My apple trees haven’t given me any apples yet so I forage for them.

 

[mythreesons290322]

I forage the wild apple trees because my trees aren’t mature enough to produce... I don’t know about you all but this one wild apple tree I found last year has the best tasting apple Ive ever eaten..have no idea what kind it is but doesn’t matter to me it’s delicious.

I made applesauce, apple butter, apple caramel butter, apple pie filling, apple juice, dehydrated apple slices and made apple cider vinegar all from this particular tree..as long as this tree is around and it’s pretty old or we don’t get a early frost this is the tree for my apple products.

I also have a wild blackberry patch on my family’s old property that me and my kids have been picking from for years..it’s endless blackberries from this patch and it give’s us more then we would ever need..I also have my own blackberry bushes that are thornless..I just wished my family liked them more..they don’t like the seeds so I wasted my time canning a many jars of pie filling and jam for them not to care for it this year I’m going to deseed it. I also made blackberry brandy that is absolutely delicious. I hadn’t thought about using my steam juicer until just now to make juice from them..hmmm.

 

[Britesea]

It's easy to make blackberry brandy (or liqueur)... just wash the blackberries and put them in a jar and cover with brandy (cheap is ok for this) although I prefer golden rum as it seems to taste more like fresh blackberries to me. Let it sit in your closet or some other dark place for a couple of months, then add simple syrup (2parts sugar to 1part water) to taste. That's all there is to it! I've done the same for quince, crab apple, and plum.

 

[Devonviolet]

We have been on our property for 3-1/4 years. Since moving here, we have planted 2 apple trees, a peach and an apricot tree. We also have a Meyer Lemon, Kaffir Lime and Persian Lime, all in pots, so we can bring them in the house before the 1st frost in Fall, and take them out in the Spring, after the last frost.

In addition to that, we have bought 4 Elderberry bushes, 6 Blackberries, 4 blueberries, 1 gooseberry, and a pomegranate.

I recently ordered 5 bareroot Rugosa Rose bushes, for the nice big rose hips, which are high in Vitamin C and make nice rose hips jelly. I can also feed them to the goats, to increase their vitamin C. Goats love tart, so I'm sure they will think rose hips are candy, just like they think orange and grapefruit rind are candy!

I recently found a listing, on Craigslist, for blueberry bushes that only cost $7 each. So, after we cut down some trees, to let sunlight in (hopefully this week), we will plant the 4 blueberries, and I'm thinking of getting another 3 or 4 blueberry bushes to add to that row.

ETA: I forgot to add that we also have wild Beauty Berries, that make really good jelly!!!

 

[BarredBuff]

@Wannabefree Get a food mill (like the cheap ones that look like a pan) and go to town! It'll make that job much easier...

That'd probably be another yard sale find.

 

[Britesea]

we have raspberries that are producing but still ramping up to full production, 2 chokecherries, 2 apple trees that give me a decent crop every other year alternating with 2 yellow plum the other years. We also have a couple of baby wild plums, a peach, and 5 hazelnuts. Other than those, I forage for elderberries, apples from some old trees in abandoned areas, and more chokecherries.

 

[tortoise]

400 blueberry bushes. raspberries pretty much died off from a virus over the last 2 years. 1 mature apple tree of whatever-no-name baking apples. We've been planting fruit and nut trees, but many years until they mature. Also have nannyberries and a native bush cranberry planted - I think 25 of each and many years left for them to mature as well.

 

[Beekissed]

Have 12 or 13 apple trees and 2 peach trees. Two raspberry plants I got last year from a good friend but they've yet to bear. Scads of wild blackberry back of the land but they haven't been tended to in many a long year, so they only bear small but numerous berries that the wild animals get to before we do. A couple of persimmon trees that are so incredible tall that no one could get the fruit until it drops and then the wild ones get it.

Got wild cherry trees all over but ditto on the wild animals...too tall for any harvesting of any kind.

We forage for mountain apples each year if they have any....last year not a single tree of many thousands had any fruit on them. A late frost got all the blossoms last year.

 

[mythreesons290322]

Also we forage blackcaps for our years supply of jam which in my opinion is the best jam in the world.

 

[sumi]

I also made blackberry brandy that is absolutely delicious.

Please tell us how you did this? I'm not a big fan of hard liquor, but this sounds really good!