North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>]

Miekal,

I've purchased 4 different varieties as single plants over the last 10 years, the most recent about 2 years ago.  The most recent one has yet to sucker, but the other 3 have produced lots of plants (a male and two different females).  I dig and pot up suckers each year and have given some to members of this list (and owe one to someone yet).  Others are used to increase my stock.  Perhaps there is something about your care that is discouraging suckering or your varieties don't sucker.  If you search/google  "seaberry sucker" you will find many references to this habit, which is regarded as a liability by some.

Like you, however, I've experienced die back of some of my plants.  I think it is due to insufficient water during the heat of summer. 

My initial female came from Indiana Berry and its fruit is significantly inferior to the more recent, fruiting named female variety I received from OGW.



--- On Sat, 1/8/11, mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com> wrote:

From: mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] seaberry source?
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Saturday, January 8, 2011, 8:19 PM

I have Leikora, whatever cultivar Bear Creek used to distribute, & seedlings grown from seed.  Frankly I can't tell the difference in fruit, based on size or sweetness or astringency.  When I was in Romania, there were great wild strains there, in literally every farmer's market, but of course, I wasn't able to bring any of the material back with me.  More than half of my planting has died back in various summers, I'm thinking either from too wet or from too dry.

& I've never had a single plant sucker (I wish) in the 20 years they've been in the ground.  There's maybe 7 or 8 that are still alive.

~mIEKAL