Cultivation Of Varietal Plants Of Honeysuckle, Strawberry, Sea Buckthorn. Harvest Varieties Of Honeysuckle, Wild Strawberry And Sea Buckthorn, Strawberry Variety Carmen

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

How the collection of favorite plants was created

The idea of choosing fruit and berry plants for the collection, which would be interesting for both amateur gardeners and simply summer residents who come to their site only on weekends, took on real forms gradually, in the process of finding their place in my third (retirement) earthly life …

The previous two flew by very quickly and with a feeling of constant lack of free time and money.

The first 16 years - an experimental engineer in a very "secret" box, where the largest and most expensive "toys" for physicists were created - charged particle accelerators. Over the years, a number of problems had accumulated that required an urgent solution. This is the housing issue - the need to join a cooperative for which there was no money. And the growing son (determined by the honored teacher to be a stable C grade, according to the state order, they must replenish the army of the working class), in whose upbringing it was necessary to increase my share of participation. And finally, the desire to see something new, i.e. satisfy the thirst for travel.

The transition to work in the defense industry made it possible to solve these problems. As a representative from the industry in the navy, I traveled almost all the seas of our country, and ten years of work in Kamchatka solved the financial problem, allowed me to form my son both physically and in terms of personality formation. By the way, he entered LISS without any problems.

Perhaps, the beginning of the third life can be considered the 90th year, when one of my friends, leaving St. Petersburg for a long period, left in my care 9 acres of virgin soil in gardening on the Karelian Isthmus. A wagon, a tent, a bed of strawberries with varieties unknown to me then and a desire to live in harmony with nature became my "initial capital" (since real money earned in Kamchatka was "eaten" by perestroika).

A couple of years later, I had vegetables from my garden on my table and a garden was laid out. The first collection included 36 varieties of tomatoes of various colors, sizes and shapes of fruits. Then there were peppers, beans, broccoli and, quite unexpectedly for me, tulips, because before my very eyes, a collection of tulips from the Botanical Gardens was “auctioned off” at Skreblovo AOZT.

Currently, I have left from her only natural species of tulips and some of the most beautiful elite "Dutch". And as a memory of that initial time and of the past summer, on the New Year's table, every year I flaunt tomatoes and hot peppers, which can be used directly from the bush as a snack.

But the garden should not only provide vegetables and fruits, but also form the most comfortable living space. Flowers, smells, shapes, sounds should delight us from early spring to late autumn, and, if possible, in winter. Therefore, the idea of selection finally took on the main directions. Beauty. Health. Longevity.

And, undoubtedly, the first place in my collection was rightfully taken by one of the most winter-hardy berry crops - edible honeysuckle. Or maybe 10 years of my Kamchatka life did not pass without leaving a trace, where at the foot of volcanoes on the richest soils we annually harvested this berry, which was calculated in buckets, and the winter harvesting of compotes was done exclusively on honeysuckle juice with the addition of a small amount of princess berries for the scent. This, by the way, is another wonderful berry that I am just starting to cultivate.

In terms of the optimal set of bioactive substances and vitamins, as well as its taste, the honeysuckle berry is a medicinal and dietary product, especially valuable because it ripens 7-10 days earlier than strawberries, when the body experiences the greatest vitamin hunger. Despite the fact that we have been breeding highly productive varieties since the 50s of the last century, honeysuckle is still a relatively new crop in our gardens, and it is almost impossible to buy berries.

Only at the Research Institute of Plant Industry named after V. I. N. I. Vavilov, over 20 zoned varieties have been bred. The highest points at the tastings of recent years have been awarded to the varieties Nymph, Violet, Volkhova. The varieties Leningradsky Giant, Volkhova, Nymph are distinguished by the sweetest berries, and Bozhovskaya and Goluboe Spindle are sweetish-sour with a piquant bitterness.

Honeysuckle is a cross-pollinated plant, so you need 3-4 different varieties to get good yields in your garden. By the way, this berry is very good in freezing for winter consumption.

And, of course, I was carried away by the garden strawberries, which today occupy the first place both in terms of the area allocated for them and in terms of gross harvest. Fresh strawberries contain up to 90% water, and in terms of iron content, it is 40 times richer than grapes. For people who care about their health and have made their choice in favor of naturotherapy, the opportunity to consume strawberries for a long time, i.e. to cleanse the body and strengthen the heart, is especially valuable. Based on this, I recommend that everyone on the site have several large-fruited varieties with different ripening periods: from the earliest, pleasing with the harvest in June, to remontant ones, bearing fruit in August and even in September. In addition, there are many small-fruited berry varieties that ripen throughout the summer.

There are now over 50 varieties of strawberries in amateur gardens and on plots of our region, and their number is increasing every year. Veteran varieties such as Zenga-Zengana, Festivalnaya, Divnaya, Krasavitsa are replaced by new varieties from various regions of our country and abroad, such as Rusichi and Malyshka.

Participation in a joint cross-border cooperation program with Finland has enriched my collection with Bounty, Kolka and the American early-maturing variety Honey, which is the most popular in all northern countries.

And the greatest joy was the appearance of the queen of the garden, the incomparable Carmen. A medium-late variety of Czech-bred strawberries, which has been under strain testing at AOZT Skreblovo since 2001, is able to meet the highest requirements. It has already shown itself to be high-yielding, winter-hardy and disease-resistant. Berries of the first collection weighing 25 grams, and mass - 20 grams. The bush is powerful, vigorous, erect, densely leafy with large dark green leaves. He is a match for the proud gypsy who gave him her name.

This variety is very decorative in single plantings on an English lawn, especially when it is strewn with large carmine-red berries with a strong aroma and taste of wild strawberries. According to Finnish farmers, in their farms they get up to 800 g of berries from the bush from the most productive varieties. Last season, I managed to collect 860 g of berries from a three-year-old Carmen bush, and the largest of them weighed 52 grams. Despite the fact that the variety testing officially ends only after two years, my friends and acquaintances have already made their choice in favor of Carmen - this miracle of selection.

There are plants in the world that are unsurpassed in their healing effects on the human body. Such plants include sea buckthorn buckthorn - one of the best multivitamin carriers. In Tibetan, Indian, Mongolian medicine, sea buckthorn occupies a very honorable place and is used completely - from fruits to roots.

The most famous medicine is sea buckthorn oil, which has bactericidal, wound healing and analgesic properties. It also delays the development of atherosclerosis and lowers the amount of cholesterol in the blood. Sea buckthorn is a dioecious wind-pollinated and light-loving plant, therefore 3-4 female and one male (pollinator) will provide your family with high-vitamin processed products for the winter. It is advisable to use it to create hedges, because the annual root growth of sea buckthorn thickens the lower part of the plantings, and 2-3 rows of plants are practically impassable for animals and humans.

And if you alternate planting sea buckthorn through 3-4 bushes with thorns, then such a hedge will delight the eye with the presence of yellow, orange and dark blue, almost black flowers.

Of the many varieties of sea buckthorn, weakly thorny large-fruited varieties with dry tearing berries on a long stalk and a loose arrangement on a fruiting branch will be preferred, which greatly facilitates harvesting.

All these requirements are met by varieties of the Botanical Garden of Moscow State University, which have been successfully living and bearing fruit for many years in the conditions of the Leningrad Region, such as Botanicheskaya Amateur, Transparent, Botanicheskaya Aromatic, Vorobievskaya, Dar MGU. (Botanical amateur - the largest-fruited with light yellow berries weighing up to 1.5 g) Sea buckthorn varieties Transparent, perhaps the most beautiful - has light, amber-yellow shiny berries weighing 0.7 g.

The variety Vorobyevskaya berry is orange-red with a red spot, but freezes slightly.

Well, that's all for a start about my favorite collection, and then I will present to the readers my best varieties of viburnum, gooseberry, currant. Began work on the selection of varieties of large-fruited cherry plum, cherry, raspberry, blackberry.

Cedar and Manchurian walnut are already growing in the collection. I would like to grow sakura, wild rosemary, and from flowers - an orchid, which is very rare in our Karelian Isthmus.