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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Charlie's Golden

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  • From: "S & E Hills" <ehills7408@wowway.com>
  • To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Charlie's Golden
  • Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 19:03:05 -0400

I've got a couple Autumn Olives that I bought 5-6 years ago. They were, I'm
guessing, seedlings as I didn't get a variety or anything. I have never
been very impressed by either the bloom (I have heard they were fragrant,
but mine really aren't, though they do bloom profusely) or the fruit
(neither the numbers--miniscule or the fruit size--also miniscule, I'd guess
about 2-3 mm in diameter). In the past few years I've gotten perhaps a
dozen fruit total from the pair, with only one plant producing anything at
all.

I'm likely to rip them out (at least one of them) this year. What size are
Charlie Golden's fruit? (online picture are so infrequently done as to
accurately show the size of fruit). I like the look of the plant, I'm just
at the point where I feel, produce or go away.

Scott Hills
Zone 6b Michigan

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Hank Burchard
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 4:29 PM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Charlie's Golden

Hello Hector and John. I'm an Autumn olive (or Autumnberry, as USDA and
I now prefer) nut, with all six of Hidden Springs's cultivars in bearing
along with a dozen plants I've collected from the Blue Ridge to Ohio. It
is a superb plant, producing scads of fruit whilst fixing nitrogen and
supplying browse for deer and cattle. I bristle at hearing it called an
"exotic and invasive" species. In the first place, I think it's time to
grant citizenship to a shrub that was introduced into America in 1825
(you could look it up). In the second place, the species "invades"
mainly hedgerows, abandoned fields and waste places such as "reclaimed"
(ha!) strip mines, where it acts as a nurse species that eventually is
shaded out.

John, if your Charlie's Golden doesn't absolutely delight you, it must
be at best a distant relative of Hidden Springs's cultivar. I like all
their others, but the CG is such a standout I have bought five of them
and now pretty much leave my other Autumnberries to the songbirds, deer
and wild turkeys. The coons, possums, bears, groundhogs and squirrels
ignore them, which amazes me; the deer browse the leaves whilst
carefully avoiding the fruit, for which I have found no explanation. I
make jelly of CG, and can expect 25 to 35 pounds of fruit per shrub,
depending on how assiduously I harvest. The juice produces an
extraordinarily handsome and tasty jelly, which is in such demand from
family, friends and neighbors that I finished my last jar in August and
am impatiently awaiting this season's harvest.

I heartily recommend Hidden Springs's Charlie's Golden. Plant one
carefully and cosset it and it will bear in the second year. Stick it in
the ground and neglect it and it will bear in the third year.

regards, Hank Burchard
Pecker Wood Farm





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