Blueberries are great, I get the hardy half-highs ... think they are Patriot and Northland. Mount Royal is a dwarf plum that's nice.

Thanks for the feedback, heartsease.

Can you say more about the plum?
Wondering if it needs a pollinator. Also, is it a pretty self-sufficient, fuss-free tree?

When do you get your fruit, and how much do you harvest?

Thanks a bunch!

Elder berries, very ornamental in my opinion & I knew a guy that used to make a sparkling elderberry wine that was better than most store bought stuff.

Serviceberry would be on my list as well. Nice blooms, berries are great for pie (if you beat the critters to them) and great fall color.

tj

The plum is self fruitful although we have a lot of wild plums around so they may help with fruit set. I've never sprayed it ... I think it bears heavy every other year and then there is a ton of fruit. I can't remember when ... maybe late July?
Wirosarian, what cultivars of elderberry do you grow? We have the wild ones but have always wanted to plant some others.
I have two Autumn Brilliance serviceberries but they are in their youth ... the robins are crazy about them, I don't think I could ever beat them to the punch.

heartsease--I don't have any elderberries in my garden, just the wild ones that grow naturally in the road ditches/banks near my property, sometimes it just nice to sit back & let Mother Nature do the gardening. Also the guy that made wine collected his elderberries from the wild.

Pears. Definitely pear trees. You need two for succesful pollination, but if a neighbor has one, you would only need one. Pears don't need any spraying or tending, they simply grow and you harvest them when ready.

As to varieties, any except Bartlett are good. The Bartletts in our neighbors yard are hard and tasteless.

Pears are wonderful, but they take forever to start bearing. I am still waiting for a semi-dwarf I planted back in 2006 to start bearing. I was allowed to pick several bushels of free pears elsewhere last fall that I dried in a dehydrator. They are wonderful, like eating gumdrops. I just peeled them cut them into 1/4 inch wide strips with no other pre-treatment. After drying them, I have been storing them in a freezer to keep them longer, although I don't know if it is totally necessary. The shade in one's yard can be an issue. Oak wilt did wonders for my garden!
Northwoodswis

Patriot and Northland blueberries are not half highs, if you are talking about the low bush x high bush blueberry hybrids. They are high bush types, but still on the smaller side. But that in no way means they are bad. At least in MN, Patriot seems to have issues with adapting to our climate, and although they never die, they don't produce as well.

Plums always need a pollinator, unless specifically said otherwise. American types pollinate American types, European types pollinate European types, and Japanese types pollinate Japanese types. There are hybrids between the three groups, and then it's best to follow the advice of the nursery/literature for the right pollinator.

You might want to look into cherry plums (small trees), cherry x plum hybrids. Very scrumptious, hardy, but do need a pollinator. I grew them for many years. Never had any disease or insect problems with them until my neighbor cut down his nearby Sweet Sixteen apple tree. The next year the plum curculios migrated to my cherry plums. Not wanting to spray, I eventually cut them down, as I could not get much usable fruit from them anymore.

Rick

OK, I'm a little confused, but that's not unusual! I bought my Mount Royal plum from Jung's where they say it does not require pollination. They also say it is an European plum so then my wild (American) plums cannot be pollinating it, can they? It isn't by any other plums.

I think you're correct, heartsease. Mount Royal is one of the few that's self-fertile, though a pollinator doesn't hurt, and I jsut learned from the St. Lawrence nursery catalog that SOME non-wild grafted plums in a certain category can definitely be pollinated by the wild ones. (Though they did not put Mt. Royal in that category, interestingly.)

I just ordered a Northern Blue Plum from them which is a self-fertile natural semi-dwarf like Mt. Royal.

Also forgot to mention in my first post that we have established elderberry and black mulberry, and a very tiny serviceberry tree (maybe a foot).

Finally, before I read the post about trouble with Patriot in MN, I had just ordered Patriot and BlueRay blueberries from FedCo. Hope they work out.

Would like to know if anyone has had luck growing purple raspberries or pears near black walnut. Some sources say they're juglone tolerant, but I feel wary!

I have a couple of plums in my yard as well. One of the first plants to bloom in spring. Unfortunately, I found out that they are a favorite of the Japanese Beetles, my plum leaves look like Swiss cheese by mid summer. One of my plums is an early ripener & the JB eat the plums from the top down as they ripen on the tree---&*%^*#@!!!

Regarding plums, yes, if the literature or catalog says they are self fertile, then they don't need another pollinator, although as was mentioned, another pollinator will usually increase production. There are cases where, for instance, a "European" plum might be pollinated by an American. Usually what is happening here is that the "European" plum has somewhere in its parentage an American ancestor that has facilitated pollinization by an American plum. Most likely the literature won't go into this much explanation. Just believe it. In the same way, self fertile might not actually mean that the plum flower is fertilized, merely that it will produce fruit. (Other fruit producing methods may be at work that do not require fertilization.)

Patriot blueberry was quoted to my by a grower in St. Cloud and one near Taylors Falls as not producing well. But, in WI and a half zone warmer or so, and closer to the species native haunts, you may be fine anyway, Arugula. I am pretty sure I remember that one grower grew Blue Ray, and was very happy with it.

I grow Northland, along with the older cultivars of MN bred half highs - North Blue, Northsky, North Country. Northland consistently grows about a foot higher than any of the others, and in years (excluding drought) when the MN ones produce poorly, Northland does well. In years when the MN ones do well, Northland does poorly.

Rick

You'll need to make your soil acidic for the blueberries which can be difficult in some parts of Wisconsin. And then you'll have to protect them from the rabbits. I gave up on blueberries and I'm moving my tomatoes to that part of the garden because the rabbits ate all my blueberry bushes.

You might want to add a black raspberry to go with the red and yellow. The blacks do have a different flavor so you might want to try it first before you plant them. They have a slightly different habit than the other raspberries and will need to be supported.

I bought a 4 in 1 pear so I wouldn't have to worry about pollination. It's three years old this year and I haven't had any pears yet but that's normal. My best trees so far have been Honeycrisp apple and Danube cherry. The cherry is almost no work but I need to net it this year so I can actually get some cherries before the birds do. I'd recommend going with a different variety though since it doesn't bear as heavily as I expected. The Honeycrisp needs insect protection on the apples which I'm still working on. I think I just bagged them too late last year. But the apples taste so much better than the store bought ones and even better than the local Honeycrisp because I can ripen mine longer.

My plums are new but I was able to keep the insects off the fruit using nylons as bags around them. Unfortunately, the all cracked but we had way too much rain last year.

Mulberry is my absolute favorite. Mulberry is so plentiful and dependable in Wisconsin yet so under-appreciated. I love walking through the woods of Wisconsin, when the mulberry is ripe, munching on it all along the way. I have two in my yard that I let some of the branches hang low so the kids can help themselves. The mulberry would get more respect, I think, if the berry had a longer shelf life and you could market it, but since it's free and abundant here it just doesn't get any respect. Mulberries are dioecious.

White mulberry is an invasive tree in most parts of the country. The WI DNR lists it as potentially invasive, even though it has naturalized throughout the entire southern half of WI(!?) White mulberry (Morus alba) does not have white fruit. The berries are normal color that go from red to purply black.

Here is a link that might be useful: U of WI info

My Patriot and Northland blueberries are about fifteen years old. I guess I don't know what happens in Minnesota but in 4A Wisconsin, in my garden, they both produce equally. Arugula, you will like picking Patriot because of the huge berries. I tried a mulberry but it didn't survive here. Wirosarian, how widespread are those nasty Japanese beetles anyway ... I don't think we have them here yet but I'm pretty isolated.

A mulberry that didn't survive? Wow.

Was it a red one? Those are naturalized here.

Are there mulberries in wild areas or neighbors' yards around you? Maybe you have a microclimate that's unfavorable, or perhaps you just had a dud.

As for the blueberries, do you find you need to acidify the soil every year, or just upon the initial planting? I'm considering planting them near a cedar tree, hoping the droppings will provide some acidification, though I'm not entirely confident about the science of that. I know pine acidifies- not sure about cedars, though they seem they should.

Theresa 2, can you remind us what dioecious means?

Athenainwi- what variety of plum do you have that you have to bag? I was hoping for something a bit more self-sufficient, but still reasonably edible. Found it interesting that you use nylons. I wonder if cotton or muslin would work too. It's popular to use plastic bags, which doesn't at all appeal to me at all, for several reasons.

For the blueberries I've had to add soil acidifier every year. But I think I've got a decent amount of lime in the soil. You'll want a soil test before you do it - that's what I would do over again if I was going try again.

The plum I was bagging was Superior. I had insect damage on my Honeycrisp and wanted to try to protect it. I've heard the plastic bags get too moist for the plums and peaches so I've been experimenting with nylons. The plastic bags work well on the apples. I've heard of some fancy japanese bags made of a lightweight material but they're expensive.

athenainwi--where do you get nylon bags for your plums?

Arugula - dioecious is a plant that has separate male and female plants.

leftwood - I just assumed that I have a red mulberry. I'll have to check mine out this spring.

I did a little research and found that you can distinguish red from white by the lower leaf surface. If it is red, it will have a rough surface; if it is white, it will have a smooth surface. I also learned that red and white mulberries hybridize readily, consequently, most mulberries in the US are of the hybridized variety.

Last year I cut up an old pair of nylons and made bags out of those. I only had a few plums and one peach to bag since my trees are still very young. Below is a link to the Home Orchard Society and you can buy nylon footies from them. They even have some that are coated with Surround which is a clay substance that is organic and is supposed to help repel insects.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fruitsoxs

I don't know which mulberry I had, it grew for about three years and then we had a winter that took it out. It may have been a dud too. Early in my gardening career I wasn't as wise about choosing mail order nurseries. I fertilize the blueberries with Miracid, only acidified the soil when they were planted. My soil is a tad acidic anyway.

"My Patriot and Northland blueberries are about fifteen years old. I guess I don't know what happens in Minnesota but in 4A Wisconsin, in my garden, they both produce equally." -- Heartsease

There is nothing like first hand experience. The growers had told me it was the weather climate here in MN that was problematic, and yes, there can be differences, even from MN to WI. So I would take Heartsease's advice over mine. Thanks for your input, Heartsease!

Rick