Oregon What fruit are you growing?

[Nick Z]

Greetings.

I put this thread here because I figured fellow Pacific Northwest residents will be purchasing or growing similar plants as I am.

Getting raw ingredients can sometimes be tricky. While we are blessed with lots of apples and berries here I have had to resort to growing some of my own fruit when I can't find it commercially. As a gardener I like growing fruit as much as I like consuming it.

Having just gotten into fermenting I am evaluating the potential of different fruits for making cider and wine. So I was curious if anyone else is growing or purchasing local fruit in season and using it.

Currently I am growing: black raspberries, red raspberries, trailing blackberry (to be specific a cultivar named Wild Treasure), strawberries, blueberries, apples, and pears. I just put in some lingonberry plants and an aronia (chokeberry) bush. I don't think the new plants will produce significant fruit for several years.

I'm also making an attempt at some native, wild fruit plants but I don't know if they will ever produce enough fruit to be used in anything.

Lastly... Has anyone found a local farm source for elderberries or lingonberries? I think they are both grown commercially in Oregon and Washington but I haven't been able to find anyone selling them to the public.

 

[pdxal]

Nick, sorry I can't help you on local sources for lingonberries and elderberries.
I have found One Green World nursery in SE Portland to be a great source for fruiting plants, especially exotic ones.
I don't have a huge yard but have used our Salal berries and figs. Also have used our Ume (Japanese flowering plum) to make vodka infusions.

 

[BruceH]

I have fruit trees. Cherry, Apple, Peach, Red Bartlett, and Asian Pear. I also have several varieties of grapes and hops.

As you already know the PNW is a fantastic climate for tree growing. I'd say that the best tree I have for cider is the Asian Pear. It produces large amounts of heavy, dense fruit that have more juice per volume than apples. I forget the exact variety, all I can say is that it's almost orange when fully ripe and has lots of flavor. Far more flavor than the overpriced ones you see in the store.

Not sure where you are but I'll throw this one out. Flower World is a large nursery outside of Maltby, Washington and has a large variety of just about any plants you could want. It takes a good half day to walk the place and really look over the stock.

Edit: I see you put Oregon in the title.

 

[6Tap]

I planted 6 dwarf mandarin trees this past spring.
Hope to harvest enough fruit from them next year to brew a mandarin ipa.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

Golden raspberries. They were in my back yard when moved in so I kept them. I get a few pounds every fall that goes great in my raspberry ale.

 

[Nick Z]

My parents and I have one apple tree and two pear trees. One pear is bartlett, the other is bosc. We had an asian pear but it got hit with a disease (fireblight, I think) and died. The apple tree has been here since before we moved in twenty or so years ago. It produces medium size fruit. Clearly a desert apple but I have no idea what cultivar. It gave me a lot of applesauce this year. I did freeze a couple of ziploc bags of apple puree from it. I may unfreeze them and extract the juice.

There is also a crab apple tree which is probably acting as a pollinizer for the cultivated apple tree. I neglected to snag any apples off it this year. There weren't many because my parents cut it back viciously a couple of years ago.

The pears trees tend towards biennial bearing. The bosc did very little this year. The apple tree produced nicely because I thinned the apples and sprayed for codling moths. Codling moths and apple maggots do tremendous damage to the apples unless I control them and they aren't controlled easily.

 

[Lille Brygger]

I planted four currant bushes (red and black), this spring. I am hoping to try brewing currants in a mead.

 

[goodolarchie]

Oh man, great topic. I'd second OneGreenWorld in the PDX area but I had a poor experience with them this year - they really botched my pre-order, missing plants that they suggested alternatives for when I got there. It's a 3 hour round trip for me, and a huge **** up in my book so I won't be going back.

I grow:

• 13 stonefruit trees - red haven peach, perfection and moorpark apricot, flavortop nectarine, elephant heart plum, flavor grenate pluots, honey punch pluot, balaton cherry, montmorencey cherry. My neighbors are apple and pear orchards so it's copacetic.
• Viognier and Muscat grapes (first year, no clue how well this will go)
• About 20 different rubus plants, from heritage raspberry to munger black raspberry, triple crown blackberry and marionberry/boysenberry.
• Misc berries like Jostaberry, blueberry, Elderberry (but I steal the flowers to brew kombucha mostly)

Also not fruit, but I grow a ton of rhubarb, and do most of my own culinary additions - peppers, hibiscus, chamomile, rose petals and rose hips, coriander, peppercorns. Also 12 hop plants yield me a few pounds every year.

One of these days I'll grow the stones to do a couple thousand sqft of barley and wheat, and make a batch of 100% estate beer. That's pretty much the finish line of mixed-ferm farmhouse brewing for me, if it turns out well. I have no illusions how labor intensive harvest + germinating + malting is... I'm not a masochist yet.