Produce of Our Estates
Some years ago we planted a dozen or so Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry) plants in the bed near the front of the house, hoping they would spread and form a ground cover around the rose bushes. Spread they did: they're on a sacred mission to take over the world, and I try to keep them confined to that bed by pulling up the runners that pole-vault into neighboring beds. Anyway, last year we harvested enough strawberries to make a pint or two of wild-strawberry ice cream. (There are species of "wild strawberries" that taste like water. These are not that kind: these taste and smell like strawberries, albeit mostly the size of your pinky fingernail.) And last week I decided to see what the bed had produced. I got at least a cup of pinky-nail-sized strawberries, so we may be able to make ice cream or something again.
Some years ago we also planted a dwarf tart-cherry tree in the sub-lawn between our section of sidewalk and the street. Last year it produced perhaps a pint of cherries, enough for a batch or two of sour-cherry scones or a small pie. Yesterday![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere said the cherries were ripe enough for some of our neighbors (squirrel, bird, and human) to start harvesting them, and asked me to put a net over the tree to keep out at least the non-human consumers. I decided to first harvest some cherries myself: I got at least a pint (about a hundred cherries) before throwing a net over the top, and made a batch of delicious sour-cherry scones last night. Harvested another sixty or so cherries today, and there are probably at least a hundred more that I deemed insufficiently ripe to pick. The ones that haven't gone into scones yet have been pitted and frozen. And I think we still have a zip-loc bag of last year's frozen cherries, so we should be able to make either a full-sized cherry pie or several batches of scones, or something else that gives cherries a starring role.
While I was picking cherries this evening,shalmestere was picking strawberries. It was dusk, not really enough sunlight to see the tiny strawberries well and decide whether they're red enough to pick, but she got a dozen or so, as well as the first two (2) raspberries from the canes in the back yard.
Some years ago we also planted a dwarf tart-cherry tree in the sub-lawn between our section of sidewalk and the street. Last year it produced perhaps a pint of cherries, enough for a batch or two of sour-cherry scones or a small pie. Yesterday
shalmestere said the cherries were ripe enough for some of our neighbors (squirrel, bird, and human) to start harvesting them, and asked me to put a net over the tree to keep out at least the non-human consumers. I decided to first harvest some cherries myself: I got at least a pint (about a hundred cherries) before throwing a net over the top, and made a batch of delicious sour-cherry scones last night. Harvested another sixty or so cherries today, and there are probably at least a hundred more that I deemed insufficiently ripe to pick. The ones that haven't gone into scones yet have been pitted and frozen. And I think we still have a zip-loc bag of last year's frozen cherries, so we should be able to make either a full-sized cherry pie or several batches of scones, or something else that gives cherries a starring role.While I was picking cherries this evening,
shalmestere was picking strawberries. It was dusk, not really enough sunlight to see the tiny strawberries well and decide whether they're red enough to pick, but she got a dozen or so, as well as the first two (2) raspberries from the canes in the back yard.