One Green World nursery tour... part 2

Also see: One Green World nursery tour... part 1

This apple tree is showing signs of drought due to a gopher eating the roots. She showed us the gopher holes. I asked her how she could tell the difference between gophers and moles. She said that moles have the lines they dig up leading to their mole hills but the gopher lines aren't as evident. A gopher hill looks horseshoe-ish versus a little hill. Gophers will actually eat the root rather but the moles just make ugly lines and hills. She said that they've learned how to gas the gophers with sulpher which you can find out about through extension services.

Apple tree showing drought from gophers eating the roots.

Ushaped gopher mound. 

Gopher hole

The pawpaw is another underutilized fruit. It's biggest problem in this climate is slugs (imagine that). They need huge amounts of fertilizer, particularly nitrogen which is best done in the spring. They form a big taproot. They hate weeds... in fact they used some dutch white clover but it was far too agressive and became weedy. The pawpaw fruit will ripen on the counter if you pick it too early. The trees will probably start producing in their 3rd year if the tree was grafted. You can freeze the pulp and make it into a gelato, which I tasted and OMG that was good.

Pawpaw tree... some leaves show slug damage. 

More slug damage on a pawpaw leaf. 

The aronia berry is not for fresh eating. Trust me, I tried it. Yuck. But the berries are very high in anthocyanins, so it would be good for medicinal qualities. Also a very strong dye. It is a North American native.

Bird nesting is very effective for control of birds.

The Russian Olive grows in Eastern Oregon and is considered invasive.

Jujube

Autumn Olive... I think this is the right photo. At any rate, she said that the tree fixes its own nitrogen, has tasty berries that are high in licopene. Tasted like whisky to me. Must've been fermenting.

Seaberry--I found these to be very sour. There is a German variety which is very acidic and a Russian variety that is a little oily. It makes great juice with sugar. She said that she had juiced some russian berries and left it for awhile and a large amount of cream seperated out. That may be an interesting culinary experiment for someone... seaberry sorbet/ice cream?

I can't seem to find the right photo for the seaberry.

The Medlar is a funny looking fruit. When ripe, you open it up and it is like eating a little cup of applesauce. They ripen like a pear, from the inside out.

The Medlar

Callaway Crabapple Check out this beauty. Well, the photo doesn't do it justice. Anyway, she said it hasn't caught on at all and they will probably phase it out. Too bad cause it really is pretty. The fruit is actually decent eating and the tree was loaded with bright red cherry looking fruit. I want.

Callaway crabapple

So pretty! The fruits were even brighter in person.

Some miscellaneous tasting notes:


The Kew crapapple wasn't terribly interesting. It tasted a bit like a red delicious apple with a bit more flavor.

I don't even know what the azarole is but I wrote "blah" in my notes.

Didn't care for this mountain ash fruit. Maybe heavily sugared it would've been better. 

These are the two grape varieties I tasted that I would consider putting in the garden. 

The hardy kiwi tasted like a mellower commercial kiwi without the fuzz. Good.

This is what stole the show. The pawpaw gelato was crazy good. I wonder if they added much heavy cream?




Curious to see what I've got growing in my garden? 




_________