You’re a lover of blueberries, an eater of raspberries, and a forager of blackberries. Yes, you adore berries, and your summer-stained face shows it. But have you forgotten a few? Here are some berries that you may already be growing in your garden, but you might be completely unaware that they’re edible!
1. Edible honeysuckles – While you might think of honeysuckles for their fragrance and for their ability to attract pollinators, did you know that there’s a shrubby honeysuckle that’s also edible? It’s called the honeyberry, or Lonicera caerulea edulis. The flavor is a mixture of blueberry, currant, and blackberry. Delicious!
2. Oregon grape – The mahonia species are big in Pacific Northwest gardens, and they’re also good in places where water doesn’t stay long in the soil. Their berries are edible, although at first they don’t appear to be. They’re incredibly sour, but they are good for sour jellies. Strain them to remove the seeds.
3. Fuschia – Yes, you heard that right. Fuschia berries are edible! And here you thought that they existed only to make a mess under the hanging baskets. These berries vary in flavor. Some are not all that tasty, some are spicy, and some are very sweet. Fuchsia procumbens is a groundcover fuschia with a lovely flavor.
4. Rose hips – You likely know that rose hips are edible, but do you use them? Rose hip jelly is a lovely, fragrant jelly. Rose hip tea is packed full of vitamin C, and it’s a winter essential for the home herbalist.
5. Raspberry relatives – You may love raspberries, but did you know that this group of plants contains a huge number of other berries that are also delicious to eat? The salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) is a lovely early spring berry.
What wacky fruits do you love to eat? Do you have any suggestions for other temperate zone gardeners?
Image Credit: sidarap