Juniper: Use And Cultivation

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

Get a juniper on your site - a beautiful and very useful plant, a record holder for phytoncides

Perhaps even the most experienced gardener can hardly tell a lot about the juniper. Probably, men will remember, first of all, gin (English vodka distilled with juniper berries), some people may also remember boletus - juniper vodka, which is very popular in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Women, at best, will say about phytoncides, abundantly secreted by juniper. That, perhaps, is all.

Probably, precisely because of the scarcity of our knowledge about biology, the properties of juniper (Juníperus), there is still so little of it in our dachas and horticultural plots. To verify this, go through any village or gardening and get a visual confirmation of this idea.

But this is a very interesting and extremely useful plant. It should be on every garden plot, even the tiniest one. And then the juniper will become not only a source of health, but also an adornment of any garden.

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But I'll start with excerpts from TSB about juniper:

From myself I will add: I also happened to meet junipers even in swampy and mossy bogs. This plant has many names among the people: grouse bush, heather, baccout, juniper, juniper, yalovets, in the southern regions of Russia - juniper. Juniper is photophilous, frost-hardy, drought-resistant.

We managed to learn something else from various sources …

Juniper fruits contain from 20 to 42% sugars, 2.6% organic acids (malic, acetic, ascorbic, formic), up to 2% essential oil; alcohol inositol, dyes, resins and waxes. The bark contains 8% tannins. Juniper fruits are most often used as a spice and flavoring product.

Juniper gives a special flavor to grilled meats and poultry dishes. Regular chicken meat takes on a game flavor. In Russian cuisine, juniper is enriched with the taste of sauerkraut, bear and venison, meat of hares and wood grouse, hazel grouses, partridges and woodcocks.

Juniper fruits are also used to flavor kvass, beer, fruit drink, soft drinks, pickles and marinades.

Juniper branches, along with needles, are added to fuel when smoking meat and fish products. Meat soaked in a decoction of juniper fruits loses its unpleasant taste and acquires a special forest flavor. Adding garlic or wormwood to the same broth enriches the taste of any meat.

Often, juniper broth is used as an integral part of the marinade. Onions, garlic, red wine, added to such a broth, allow you to cook dishes from ordinary meat with the aroma of wild game or with the aroma of the forest. In addition, the fruits of the juniper are used for the manufacture of sweet syrup, jelly, marmalade, gingerbread, jelly, and gingerbread. The syrup is prepared from fresh berries, carefully crushed with a wooden pestle so as not to damage the seeds, which have a lot of bitterness.

Juniper wood has high mechanical properties. Differs in aroma, fresh reminiscent of the smell of pepper. This smell persists for a long time and is due to the presence of extractive substances that make the wood resistant to rotting and damage by insects. When distilling wood, turpentine, brown and red paints, white varnish are obtained from it.

Since ancient times, many peoples have considered the juniper a symbol of eternal life. And not at all because in favorable conditions it can grow for several thousand years, the reason is in its medicinal properties, which have been known since time immemorial. Everything is used in modern medicine: roots, branches, needles, berries. Tincture of fruits is used as a diuretic for dropsy, urolithiasis, chronic cystitis, inflammation of the bladder. It increases appetite, bile formation and bile secretion, enhances the secretion of gastric juice.

I will give a recipe for only one, the most famous tincture from the fruits (berries) of juniper:

In addition, juniper fruits are prescribed in combination with other herbal remedies: for chronic diseases of the respiratory tract, for thinning sputum, for gastroenteritis, gout and rheumatism. Its roots are used to treat pulmonary tuberculosis, bronchitis, skin diseases, and stomach ulcers. A decoction of the branches is recommended for allergies.

Used juniper and veterinary medicine. The infusion of fruits is used to destroy parasitic insects that plague animals. For the same purpose, they burn the fallen needles of a juniper and fumigate cattle with smoke.

Our family's attempts to "make friends" with the juniper began as soon as we acquired a plot of land. We were interested not only in the pyramidal, unusually attractive type of plant, but also in its exceptional usefulness. In several publications, I met the same statement: “In just a day, 1 hectare of juniper releases up to 30 kg of phytoncides. This amount of volatile substances is enough to clear the air from germs in a big city."

Therefore, the family council unanimously decided: "To be a juniper on our site!" Moreover, as quickly as possible. And I, as the head of the family, took up the practical implementation of our collective decision.

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Since I had to start everything from scratch, the question immediately arose: how can a juniper be bred? I read in the scientific literature that it reproduces:

1. Seeds that sprout only a year after sowing.
2. Cuttings, which are harvested in early autumn.
3. Layers are mainly creeping species.
4. By grafting - especially rare, valuable species and forms are grafted onto individuals of the same or closely related species.

In the same book, I paid special attention to this line: "It is badly renewed in nature." I believe that this is completely true, since I have never seen any juniper growth under any tree.

It is clear that the first two methods are most acceptable for the reproduction of juniper. My task, as I thought, was facilitated by the fact that on the old woman's site, located across the road from us, three magnificent junipers grew, each at least four meters high in the photo. It was from them that I collected seeds and cut off the layers. I helped a neighbor with construction work, and in return she gave me a kind of carte blanche: she allowed me to use junipers at my discretion. I started, of course, with seeds.

In the first year in the fall, I planted them on the site in more than twenty places. And in the most different: on sand, clay, humus, sandy loam, loam, peat, on the ground mixed with compost. And he began to wait for shoots - almost the same as the notorious Buratino, who buried coins in the Field of Fools. Alas, not a single seed sprouted the next year. Then I began to combine: I planted three blue and two green seeds together and vice versa. But a year later the result was the same - zero.

Then I took up the cuttings. Here fortune smiled at me: one plant out of more than three dozen stored cuttings still took root. It was just a tiny twig no more than twenty centimeters high. How we cherished him! Every morning they examined them, watered them with water in the heat, removed weeds, and fed them with fertilizers. To our great chagrin, after two years, this mini-juniper dried up.

But I didn't despair. "If the neighboring seeds and cuttings do not take root," I decided, "then maybe you will be lucky with seedlings from other places?" I remembered that at the entrance to the bathhouse, which is near the Baltic station, not very tidy people constantly sell juniper brooms. I talked to them. They promised to help.

And again a mistake: all ten cuttings that I bought from them died. It became quite obvious that all my amateur attempts to plant junipers had failed. This is where I stopped. The same fate befell a neighbor on our street. The son brought him a one and a half meter juniper in a wooden tub. A neighbor planted him in a sunny place: he fertilized the earth well and watered diligently. And no sense. The tree immediately began to wither: at first the needles turned yellow, then crumbled. And soon the juniper died.

However, I hope that my and my neighbor's, even if negative, experience will help others who want to start cultivating this plant to decide how to do it in the best way. Either try to grow yourself from seeds, or plant cuttings, or use ready-made seedlings.

True, here suddenly one woman posted amazing information on the Internet. I quote verbatim.

I am far from a beginner in the gardening business, but I don’t presume to comment on these lines. Do such miracles actually happen? I do not know. Although anything can happen on the Internet. Who will check?

Alas, since no such miracles happened on my site, I bought juniper seedlings in the store. He started with creeping forms, then got bushy, and when some of them took root, he also took up pyramidal ones. I did not choose the soil; I planted it where there was free space. Observed only one condition: the place had to be necessarily sunny.

Now, ten years later, six young junipers thrive on our site, two of which are pyramidal. In ten years these two plants have grown by only … 50 centimeters! They are so slow …

In conclusion, I want to recommend a few recipes for dishes using juniper berries:

Juniper soup

5 minutes before readiness, put juniper fruits in the meat broth at the rate of 4-5 berries per serving and cook until tender. Crushed juniper fruits can be added to soup bowls on the table (1 teaspoon of berries for 4-5 servings).

Hunting meat

Cut a kilogram of beef into 4x4 cm squares and about 1 cm thick, soak in the marinade for 4 hours and fry in a pan. To prepare the marinade, boil 20 g of juniper berries in water, separate the broth, cool and add chopped 100 g of onions, 20 g of garlic, salt and vinegar to taste.

Sauerkraut with juniper

Grind 20 g of dry juniper berries in a mortar and boil in a liter of water. Pour the broth into the cabbage when salting at the rate of 0.5 liters per 10 kg of cabbage.

Milk with cottage cheese, juniper cones and nuts

Thoroughly chop 5 pieces of dry juniper berries, add water, boil for 4-5 minutes, let it brew for 2-3 hours, then strain the broth. In 200 g of grated cottage cheese, add 10 chopped almond kernels, 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 glasses of milk, 2 glasses of water, a decoction of juniper berries and beat the mixture for 2-3 minutes.

Juniper spices

Crushed (like black pepper) dried juniper berries can be added to meat soups (about 1 teaspoon for 4-5 servings). Or add 20 g of whole berries to the meat broth (per 1 liter) already cooked and seasoned with potatoes, carrots, onions and dill, then cook it for 20 minutes.

Kvass with juniper

3-5 minutes before readiness, add juniper broth to the kvass at the rate of 10-20 fruits per 1 liter of kvass.

Juniper Berry Beer

Cook 200 g of fresh juniper berries in water for 30 minutes. Then strain and cool to room temperature. Then add 50 g of honey and 25 g of yeast, stir and ferment. When the yeast rises, stir again and bottle. Cap the bottles and leave in a cool place for 3-5 days.

Juniper tea

2 teaspoons of chopped juniper berries pour 0.5 liters of boiling water and leave for 10-15 minutes.

Juniper syrup

Crush 1 kilogram of juniper berries in a mortar, pour three liters of water, heat to 40-50 ° C and keep at this temperature for 2-3 hours. Strain, refrigerate and use to flavor meat dishes and drinks.

Juniper Tincture

Boil 5 g of fresh or 3 g of dried juniper berries in a little water, then strain, add 25 g of honey, mix with 0.5 liters of vodka and leave for 10 days.

Alexander Nosov Author photo

Also read:

How to transplant a juniper from a forest to a garden