Five years ago, Alice and Dudley started putting in edible perennials in their large backyard, at the same time that their neighbor Robert did the same.  Walking through their gardens was a bit like reading through those catalogs I drool over, full of fruits I'd heard of but had never seen in the flesh, like goumi, jujube, and more.  Other unusual plants were familiar from my own garden, where they haven't had time to achieve their full potential.  Since most of Alice, Dudley, and Robert's perennials were old enough to fruit, I was curious to see which ones had been exciting (or disappointing) surprises in a climate much like my own.

First for the big disappointment.  Both Alice and Robert told me that their gojiberries never fruited.  In our climate, the variety they planted (and which I have in my own garden, a gift from Alice) blooms so late that the fruits never have time to form.  Meanwhile, the thorny shrub takes over the garden.  Robert has plans to root out his gojiberries this year, and after hearing their experiences, I think I'm not going to give mine the extra grace year I'd promised it and will follow suit.  There's no room in a working garden for an underachiever.

Alice was also somewhat disappointed in her bush cherries, noting that the fruits were small and seedy, so they were tough to pit for cooking.  Robert mentioned that his jujube hadn't produced fruit in five years.  And Alice's jostaberry hasn't fruited in that time frame either, although she mentions that the problem could be shade.  Other non-fruiters included Rosa rugosa, Japanese walnut (although nuts take longer and this plant still has hope), hardy kiwi, plum yew, and paw-paw.

 Meanwhile, I picked the gardeners' brains about their top perennials --- ones that produce delicious fruit with little work.  Traditional fruits were at the top of each list --- ever-bearing red-raspberries and thornless blackberries for Alice and a peach and Asian pear for Robert.  But so were some less usual fruits --- both agreed that their Asian persimmon (Eureka) and goumi were tops for flavor and ease.  It sounds like I might need to add some of both in our own garden.

This post is part of our Real Forest Gardening lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Best trees and shrubs for an Appalachian forest garden Mulch and herbs in the forest garden Combining forest gardens and vegetable gardens Top 13 forest garden species Coppicing in the southern Appalachians

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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