Some of you may remember when our dogwood was so late blooming and then I posted pictures and a few of my informed viewers told me it wasn’t a traditional dogwood but a Kousa Dogwood.
This time last year, I was here but Vince wasn’t. I noticed that it had something that looked almost like a raspberry growing on it. I didn’t think much about it but Vince decided to look them up and it’s actually an edible fruit. He ate some of them before they were fully ripe and they were a bit sour but everyone says once they’re bright pink or red, they’re sweet and juicy. Who knew?
Of course, I found a jelly recipe and would love to make jelly. Vince suggested we wait – fertilize it good and give it plenty of water and pick the fruit next year. If I can harvest enough of them, I’m going to make the jelly but if not, I’ll wait til next year and hope we have a larger crop.
So many of ours are on the ground so . . next year the tree will get fertilized and will get lots of water and we’ll see what happens.
Cheryl says
I hadn’t heard of a fruit bearing dogwood. If you don’t have enough to make jelly could you dry them & use for granola or snack?
Judy Laquidara says
They have a LOT of seeds so those would need to come out first so no, I wouldn’t go to that much trouble.
Dottie Newkirk says
I was just wondering if you could run them through a food mill (to get the seeds out) and dry it (fruit leather?!?!?).
Judy Laquidara says
I don’t have enough of them to mess with right now. We don’t like fruit leather much so I’ll make jelly with them or nothing probably.
Barbara says
We had a yellow lab who would gobble up every red Kousa dogwood berry she could reach. Then one day migrating birds would come in the morning and eat all the berries and fly off. It was fun to try and identify all the different birds that came over the years.
Judy Laquidara says
I’ll have to pay more attention to bird activity. Maybe I had more berries than I thought we did.