North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Sarah Kehler Ewing <skkewing@yahoo.com>]

Hi folks,

Please pardon me if I am reposting something here... I've been recovering 
from a badly botched surgery for appendicitis and I've had a lot of really 
great drugs recently so my short term memory isn't so hot!  ;o)

As for Nankings, I'm a bit horrified by you folks out there bashing them!  My 
candy loving children love to go visit my friend when hers are ripe.  Barb 
has a row of wind break stock purchased as a bundle of seedlings from T&T 
Seeds, Manitoba about 9 years ago (and they still sell this package).  They 
all have different sized and coloured fruit, but only one bush out of the row 
is maybe too tart to thoroughly enjoy fresh by all of us.  The 10 bushes all 
have fruit that is about thumbnail sized (although size does vary slightly) 
and come in dark red, bright red, peach and white.  Her bushes are about 6-8' 
tall, very full of branches and fruit every year on the top of her windswept 
hill zone 3 hill.  They are very sweet and tasty when ripe and make excellent 
jam which tastes like cherry with a hint of chokecherry.

My only complaint about them is that the cherries grow very close to the 
branches making them a bit of a nuisance to pick, but even that is relative: 
you can pick a gallon in probably half the time it would take to pick 
saskatoons or chokecherries or pincherries.

T&T Seeds also sells a Giant Nanking which is supposed to be much larger… 
more on that later (I’ve got two Giant Nankings and two rows of seeds from my 
friend’s best tasting Red Nanking and Peach Nanking).

Sarah 
zone 3
Edmonton, AB


I’m with Lucky on this one. (actually we seem to agree frequently)  I planted 
a row of 10 or so and over the years pulled each one out to replace it with 
something better. The fruit was small and production was disappointing (even 
the nightborhood kids asked why I kept them before I pulled them out….my 
oldest son and his friends used to really enjoy eating in the yard). 

Scott Hills 


Don’t know if the Nankings I got were typical, but if that’s as big as the 
fruits get, I ain’t planting any more of ‘em, and the birds are welcome to 
‘em. 
Heck-fire, the fruits on the native black cherry, P.serotina, are bigger and 
have more edible pulp than the measly little things my Nankings produced. 

LLP 



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