A Royally Good Berry

Evergreen, dark green older leaves accented by bright green new growth and a touch of pink on the ends, reddish pinkish stems, loads of white bell shaped flowers in the spring to be followed with smallish blueberry sized fruit said to be the favorite of queen Victoria. Did I get your interest? The Chilean Guava (Ugni Molinae) is a South American relative of the Guava and member of the Myrtle family. It is somewhat cold hardy. I've seen reports of anything from zone 7 to zone 9. Mine has survived 9 degrees with minimal protection. Only slight tip die back on a few branches. When I saw the cold coming I dumped a bunch of willow leaves I had saved from our big willow tree abd covered it completely for the 3 nights that it got below 15 degrees. This is only it's second year in the ground and I don't plan on babysitting it as much one it has established. I do know once well established they usually will resprout from the base if badly damaged. My fist year I got 1 fruit but that was enough to have me hooked. No idea how to describe it other than blueberryish but more of a spicy flavor. I cannot believe these are not more popular. Very aromatic when in bloom. Have a strawberry scent. They stay 3-4' typically in the pnw but can get up to 8' in warmer areas. The borderline hardiness is my only complaint but I will get it going and let it do it's thing. Put one of these baby's in and I'm sure you will be the king of the block.

Just One Blueberry Bush

50 miles north of Seattle in a zone 8 garden far far away (or not so far if you live close by).......  2 years ago my wife and I decided to try to grow a tomato plant, and some carrots in our 1/16th acre property and an addiction was born.  I really desired to have a nice looking landscape but was getting bored of watering landscape plants and cutting grass and I find it much more rewarding to put work into something that will give back.  Not that I'm selfish or anything.  I just like to see the fruit of my labor (lots of pun intended).  So it all happened like this:  (My wife) Honey, can we grow a tomato?  (Me) Are they hard to grow. (My wife) I don't think so.  (Me) Sure.  (Me in my mind) Sure as long as I don't have to do much.  Well turns out those suckers really grow.  We got one to reach the top of our canopy in the back yard.  I guesstimate that to be about 8' or so.  It was a yellow pear tomato.  We had enough for ourselves, friends and the dog who ran around burying them in the yard and in the corners of the patio furniture.  I thought it was so successful and fun that we should add a blueberry bush.  I mentioned it to my wife and she said "I don't know if we have enough room for fruit bushes.  Do you know how big those things get?"  I replied with a very manly "Please, let give it a try."  She quickly gave in and actually bought me a Reka Blueberry.

I was very excited and content.......for a few weeks......  Next thing I knew I had a Triple Crown Blackberry as well.

It grew all the way to my roof line and back down to the ground. Fast forward to today and I have 65 different edible plants including blackberries, blueberries, boysenberry, chilean guava, chilean wintergreen, columnar apple trees, cranberries, wintergreen, currants, feijoa, figs, gojiberries, gooseberries, grapes, honeyberries, huckleberries, kiwi, lemons, lingonberries, luma, nectarines, passion fruit, raspberries, rhubarb, salal, and many varieties of strawberries.  This does not include my veggie garden of all the standards.  I even got watermelon this year (which is hard to get in my maritime climate) thanks to the variety Blacktail Mountain.  They are awesome.  I found out about them through Tall Clover Farm.  My daughter is my garden walking companion.  We walk the garden every day we can looking for bugs and weeds to pull.  This might seem obsessive but let me explain myself.  My purpose of this blog is to create a reference for myself and others who are growing rare and common fruits and vegetables in similar temperate climate and giving others a point of reference for doing the same on a small lot.  If you love the idea of growing something from another continent or things that you had no idea you could grow you are my kind of person.  I like to try to grow new things and if they don't make it that is okay.  I have a funeral for each bush that doesn't make it.  (Actually I'm just burying it so it will compost but I tell the other plants its a funeral so they don't get suspicious.).  I hope you join along and we can expand what is the norm for a zone 8 garden.