June berries

I don't know if I'm in the right forum. My mom grew up on a farm on the border of MO and IL. I forget how to spell the town, but it's something like Kehoke. That's probably way off. It's across the line from Quincy IL.

Anyway, she has always raved about these berries they'd go pick and eat called June berries. From what I can tell, these also go by the name Service berries. So I ordered some from Raintree Nursery here in the PNW to plant as last year we moved to 2.5 acres and I want to make my own little 'farm.' (You'd have to understand the family mentality but I come from a fairly big family and a big part of our growing up has always been my mom and all her sisters talked about 'the farm.') The instructions said they can be grown as a hedge or a tree. I wasn't expecting a tree! How could you stand there and pick berries if they're up in a tree? I think they're very much like blueberries.

Are any of you familiar with 'june berries'? Did I buy the wrong thing?

Gwendalou

I am familiar with serviceberry, it is an ornamental tree/shrub. I haven't heard of people eating the fruits. Do you know what the fruits look like?
I don't know of any tree or shrub with June in it's name. I would assume it is an early fruiting berry.

They go by the name juneberry, serviceberry, or saskatoon.

I believe they flower in April and bear berries in June (hence the name!).

I've been doing a bit of research and am seeing these things as trees. I called my mom and she said theirs were like large lilac bushes. I finally did find some pics on the 'net that looked exactly like what she has always described to me. HUGE bushes that look similar to a blueberry bush only really really tall. I guess you can keep the suckers cut off if you want the tree shape.

I think we'll let the suckers stay on ours, so that helps us decide where in the yard to plant them.

I hope they do well here. Seems they are native to the midwest regions but we bought from a PNW nursery and I don't think they would have sold to us if these didn't do halfway okay here. I don't expect they'll ever look like my mom's but neither do our lilacs look like midwestern lilacs (but we still like them ).

Yes, you can eat the fruit. It's supposed to be really good. Some of the juneberries are more 'ornamental' than others. One of the varieties I bought turns red in the fall. The white spring flowers look pretty too. I read just now that it's a member of the apple family. Like blueberries and huckleberries, the berries are probably hard to pick. It takes me forever to pick our huckleberries. I think people that pick them to cook with (pies, jams, etc.) use them to supplement other types of berries as it's so time-consuming to pick them. My mom said she and her sisters use to just stand by the bushes and eat them from the bushes.

I have a raspberry-loving son. We have a raspberry patch here but unfortunatetly it was neglected for the five years previous to us moving here so all had to be removed and we're starting over. I put in 3 this year and will add as time goes by. I look forward to seeing my son stand out there and just eat the berries from the bush. If there are eventually enough left over for me to bring in and use in the kitchen, that would be great, but I'm really just putting them in for Jesse to eat.

Gwendalou

Look for Regent Serviceberries, this is a shrub form grown more for picking.

Here is a links that lists other varieties for berries.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/V2-516.html

Here are some source that carries some different varieties.

http://www.pineridgegardens.com/2003Tree.htm

http://www.sln.potsdam.ny.us/juneberries.html

Here are some sources that carries some different varieties.

http://www.pineridgegardens.com/2003Tree.htm

http://www.sln.potsdam.ny.us/juneberries.html