Low Maintenance, Resilient "Food Forest:" A Case Study

There’s a stretch of bike path in McHenry Illinois where the wild has long been attempting to reassert herself. It’s a place where many come to forage on berries, wild fruits and vegetables, one I’ve written about many times as an “unofficial” community forest garden tended lightly by those who come to share in the harvest.  And those who do harvest this site have much to share in. With almost no mainteance, the site produces a wide diversity of fruits and vegetables, including strawberries, black raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, chokeberries, highbush cranberries, particularly nice wild grapes, elderberries,  black walnuts, hickory nuts, … Continue reading Low Maintenance, Resilient "Food Forest:" A Case Study

Plant Profile: Cornelian Cherry, Cornus Mas

If you like to pucker, then you’ll want to get acquainted with the sweet-tart flavor Cornelian Cherries.  The Cornelian Cherry Dogwood, Cornus Mas, is a native of west asia and carries an ancient culinary pedigree, being pickled as “olives,” used as gourmet floral-scented preserves, and even as the orginial sweet-tart “sorbet” in Persia. “Floral, complex, intriguing, distinctive, rich, unequaled” are often found in the long strings of adjectives writers use in describing the flavor of the cooked fruit, when sweetened or added to alcohol.  In the Great Lakes landscape, (it’s hardy throughout the Great Lakes Region) it grows to a … Continue reading Plant Profile: Cornelian Cherry, Cornus Mas