Garden Huckleberry Time

The black raspberries are almost done and now the garden huckleberries are starting to ripen. The early ones I threw in the berry mixes I use for bumbleberry spread. Today I got about a cup and a half and put them into the solar dehydrator. I'll use them like raisins or currents over the winter.

Some seed catalogs call these ground huckleberries. They are of the tomato plant family. I got my first seeds from Baker Seeds, a Missouri company. They didn't do well for me. I didn't plant any last spring. But late last summer I noticed a volunteer garden huckleberry in my lettuce patch, seeded there from the compost I fertilized it with. In September I picked the handful of berries it produced because they were larger than the berries I had gotten in my first planting.

In the spring I crumbled the dried berries and got out enough seeds to start about twenty-four plants. I've got them in three different locations. The ones in my front garden have turned out the smallest, but I'm still getting some berries. The others have done very well and I'll have berries for several weeks.