Nanabush Food Forest Stories — fruit

From a distance the food forests still appear somewhat dormant, or at least sleepy...  but as you walk around and take a closer look, you see a tremendous amount of activity, beauty and promise. Haskaps and strawberries are flowering away, currants and gooseberries soon to follow... rhubarb is a serious go, and a new find, the lingonberries have joined the race!  Such sweet little plants...  

Bright red beauties, little anti-inflammatory superfruits!  The low bushes are now starting to produce at the homebase food forest... I like to drop a few into a cup of herbal tea.  Perhaps next year there will be enough to put into some products to share.  They are a lovely plant that does well at the base of larger fruit trees.  If you are planning a home food forest, please consider growing goji berries (a.k.a. wolfberries). 

No, its not a rewrite of the Kansas song, its a fruit that seems to be wayward of the tropics.  I am referring to the Asimina triloba plant, or common pawpaw which is the largest indigenous fruit on the North American continent.  A native of Ontario and many northeastern U.S. states, this plant is the only one of its genus found outside of the tropics, wayward?  perhaps... but that is not the only unusual thing about it... The pawpaw has fetid or stinking flowers that attract scavengers such as flies and beetles to pollinate it.  The source of the smell...

Seems like only yesterday, I was processing buckets and buckets of black walnuts, testing the structural integrity of double layers of heavy rubber gloves...  This year promises to be similar as those tasty little buggers will soon start dropping en masse.  Thanks to Giacomo Panico from CBC radio for coming over to visit our base camp food forest and try out one of my favourite recipes to use them in, the scrumptious Black Walnut & Lentil burgers with Sour Cherry Salsa.  It was a lot of fun to tour him through the chaos and wonder of a 4 year old...

In fact this post is not about my bridge-grafting operation to save a Clapp pear tree that was ringed by mice over the winter… In our recent organic certification inspection, the conversation came around to what tree seedlings were growing.  Along came a proclamation from someone that they “will never grow butternut”.  I can only assume, this is for fear of the dreaded butternut canker that can inflict trees.  This is in fact why we started a whole bunch of butternut trees from seed last year.  We are happy to be a part of the Butternut Rescue team, and hope...