My berry patch. It doesn’t look like much now, but hopefully soon we’ll have some irresistible berries to eat. Here’s what I have in here:

ponca blackberry

arapaho blackberry

triple crown blackberry

risager black currant

savannah zap black currant

consort black currant

crandall black currant

giant jostaberry

pink champagne currant

white imperial currant

Jonkheer van Tets red currant

rovada red currant

poorman gooseberry

Hinnomaki red gooseberry

selby gooseberry

Jeanne gooseberry

Hinnomaki yellow gooseberry

I’ve had to procure a permit from the state of Michigan to grow the black currants. This is due to white pine blister rust in parts of the US. (Several states have their own individual restrictions.) It’s a fungal disease that has a reciprocal relationship with currants, and needs them in close proximity to our state tree, the white pine, in order to infect the trees. Crazy, I know! Some black currants are more disease-resistant than others, so I’m limited in the varieties I can grow.

Thankfully, the county that I live in (Oakland) is outside of the control zone for gooseberries and red, pink, and white currants. So I’m free to grow any varieties of these that I’d like.

Very soon, I need to put up some netting to keep out the deer first (who loved eating my blackberry plants last year down to a nub; thankfully, they’ve come back this spring), and eventually the birds too with a barrier across the top.

And I know it looks like there’s no way I’ve managed to fit all of these varieties in this bed. I think it looks smaller in this photo than it really is, and hopefully I’ve given all of the plants enough room to grow. It’ll just be my own damn fault if I get scratched by gooseberry thorns trying to make my way around them if I’ve crowded them too much! I can’t wait for these berries to ripen for some upcoming recipes.

I’m going to work on showing you guys the process in my gardening adventures more than I have before. Last year I wanted to wait until I had perfect crops before I felt that they were viable to share. And meanwhile, I was planting, weeding, and tending them every day, along with recipe testing, photographing, and general running around like crazy 24/7, doing so many other things with so little to show for it. I’m still doing the 24/7, but I feel like it’s valid and fun to invite you along for the ride.

So if you guys are interested (and even if you’re not, LOL), I’m going to show you more of the process, the in-betweens. Including starting to do video as I continue to study the editing process and try to feel more comfortable having my old-ass self in front of the camera.

So when this berry patch is full of lush berries, you’ll be able to see how far it’s come. And on my next recipe photo shoot, I’m excited to show you a photo of the disastrous aftermath that takes hours to clean up. I hope this will be fun to see the whole journey from now on! Thanks so much, everyone, for being a part of it. 🥰