June 30, 2020

As summer moves from June to July it turns into a time a bounty especially for those who like tasty fruit to eat whether humans or birds or other animals.  Always be mindful of identifying poisonous berries from those that are edible.  A great book to pick up is Wild Berries & Fruits Field Guide by Teresa Marrone.  This is a wonderful resource by telling you what is delicious or not edible or toxic for the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.  There is a companion book Cooking with Wild Berries & Fruits.  Thanks again to Bix Baker for the photos and information about various fruit and milkweed found at Fort Ridgely State Park.

Tasty Fruit Snacks

One of my favorite times of the year is when raspberries are ripe to pick.  The red raspberries in my garden are just starting and also the black raspberries that grow wild all over Fort Ridgely are starting.  They first turn red but are not yet ready.  The picture below shows the sequence from green to red to black.  The blackening one is not quite ready.  They turn dark black and when they can be pulled off easily leaving the white core, they are ready and at their peak for sweetness and flavor.  I make jam or jelly with raspberries.  They are great on ice cream or in deserts.  They are best eaten straight off the bush but don't eat too many.  Leave some for the rest of us.  The black raspberries are smaller than commercial raspberries but are just as tasty.  When you cannot eat, make dessert or jelly or something, preserve them for winter by fast freezing them individually on a cookie sheet and then into a jar in the freezer.  They are much easier to put on cereal or desserts in the winter if they are frozen as separate berries rather than one big blob. Birds eat lots of berries and spread the seeds in their poop. Their patches move from one place to another this way.  A few have been planted in our red raspberry patch in this way.

There are other fruits that grow wild and can be eaten.  Wild strawberries are in the park but are so small that it is hard to get enough to get more than a taste. 

There are wild grapes (see picture) on vines all over the park as well. They are still green now but will turn dark purple and are ripe then.  They are a very tart grape and are small with a big seed.  Still if you can find enough they make a good jelly. 

Wild plums are on many small trees and had beautiful white blossoms about a month ago.  They also are green now (see picture) but turn orange to red when ripe.  Last year I made jam with them mixed in with peaches.  Very tasty! 

Gooseberries are on short prickly bushes similar to raspberries but are also still green (see picture).  I have only eaten the ripe fruit when it turns black.  I have heard that the green fruit can be used in gooseberry pie. 

We have a red currant bush that produced lots of berries last year.  This year I found some wild black currant bushes that are growing wild near the middle school in Fairfax.  There may be some at Fort Ridgely.  I made some jelly with the red currants last summer and may try to mix in some wild black currants this year.  Both currants and gooseberries have natural pectin in them so do not need Sure Jell when making jelly.  Make sure you cook them long enough as one batch of currant jelly jelled and the other that I cooked less did not.

Red elderberries are just starting to turn red but the edible black elderberry plants are  blossoming now (see picture) and the little black fruit will be ready in about a month. I make jelly with it and my brother in law makes a tonic from it.  People have made wine with most of these fruits. 

BE VERY CAREFUL WITH PICKING AND EATING BERRIES!  Make sure you are positive it is the one you think it is.  There are a number of nasty tasting (and some poisonous) berries in the woods and prairie areas at Fort Ridgely and elsewhere.

Milkweeds blooming and their visitors

There are at least 4 types of milkweeds at Fort Ridgely.  Monarch butterflies will lay their eggs on all of these and the caterpillar will eat the plants before pupating and forming the familiar butterfly.  Two of these milkweed species are blooming right now.  Common milkweed has the familiar pink globes of flowers.  

Butterfly weed has various shades of orange and even sometimes yellow flowers with the same shaped individual flowers as common milkweed. Monarchs not only lay eggs on milkweeds but get pollen and nectar for their own survival (see picture on butterfly weed). 

I do not have a picture of a monarch on common milkweed this year but I saw a rare but intriguing visitor to their flowers Sunday.  It is a titan sphinx moth and is a species of hummingbird moths. Notice the long proboscis or straw-like tube that he uses to suck nectar from the milkweed flower.

There were a variety of bees visiting milkweeds this week.  Compare the sizes of the bees too!  There is a bumblebee and honeybee  in one picture, small green sweat bee and a leafcutter bee in the other two. 

Trumpeter Swan Update

Cygnets are growing.  This picture was taken of the same trumpeter swan family at a local lake that was in the June 15  update.