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I have three named cultivars of autumn olive, obtained from several 
nurseries.  All bore heavily this year. At two dates I averaged the weight of 
300 berries from each with the following results:

                9/19/05      10/3/05

Ruby             0.28 g        0.34 g

Brilliant Rose   0.47 g        0.47 g

Sparkling Blush  0.40 g        0.58 g
 

I didn't weigh any of the local wild berries but all were much smaller than 
these.  At both pickings, and when tasted from the bushes two weeks later, 
they all tasted about the same, not much different from most of the wild 
berries, sweet but with a slight astringency.  All made excellent jelly. 

This is in full sun in south central PA (Adams county) on heavy clay soil 
derived from the local diabase rock.

Bob Hartley z6






From: tanis cuff <tanistanis@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue Nov 08 15:08:01 CST 2005
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [NAFEX] autumn olive report

The autumn olives in my neighborhood have gotten numerous enough, and had 
enough fruit this year, that I tried sorting out some better ones.  I didn't 
find any w/ the larger sized fruits which have been mentioned previously on 
the list.  I still have one patch to check.

Bushes mostly have small bitter fruits, lots of tannic acid.  A few w/ more 
sugar, for a strong tart-sweet zippy flavor. Rarely a flavorless dull one.  
Biggest problem seems to be season length-- we had a long warm summer, yet 
even in early Nov some bushes didn't ripen fruits completely.  Secondary 
problem is rabbits feed on bark thru winter, which might rejuvinate a clump 
but reduces the fruit yield, because autumn olive yields on older wood (at 
least, the ones I saw.)

I didn't notice any diseases, except maybe a stem canker, but this was 
always low on the stems and may have been just rabbit damage.

tc, s.WI, some autumn olive on sand, some on silt, some shaded, some sunny