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GARDEN JOURNAL

Garden huckleberry carries a mad dog dark secret

February 10, 2016

Huckleberry Hound was top dog for quite awhile. “The Huckleberry Hound Show” was the first animated show to win an Emmy. “Huck” turned cartoons into interactive TV when he broke the “fourth wall” and spoke right at the audience.

Huckleberry Hound was even a bit clairvoyant. On Nov. 13, 1960, Huckleberry Hound was cast as the scientist to first put a man into outer space. The laugh was on the United States when a few months later, April 12, 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into space and orbited the earth.

But why huckleberry? The name huckleberry is just a variation of the English name for this berry, the whortleberry. Whortleberry or huckleberry, (Solanum melanocerasum) is an annual that is grown for its dark, black-colored berries. The garden huckleberry carries a mad dog dark secret; it is actually mildly toxic if eaten before it is dark black, fully ripe.

On top of that the half-inch huckleberries are absolutely terrible tasting until you do one simple thing. Cook them with lemon and sugar.

The huckleberries are not just sweetened; the taste is said to actually transform them into a likeable flavor somewhere between blueberries and concord grapes.

Use cooked and sweetened huckleberries in any recipe in which you would use blueberries or raspberries. Besides pies, they make excellent jams and cobblers.

Huckleberries grow from seed to fruit in just one season, so are perfect for gardeners looking for an easy-to-grow berry crop that has fantastic yields. The berries hang in clusters or tresses of up to 15, and produce all season long.

Start huckleberry seeds indoors the same time you start tomatoes or peppers.

Plant the seeds one-quarter to one-half inch deep in flats or peat pots. Transplant them into the garden after all danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed up.

Bury the transplants up to their lower leaves. These are fairly large plants, growing up to four feet tall, so give them room to grow. Set the plants at least 16 inches apart in rows several feet apart. Huckleberries need a lot of nutrients to put out such heavy growth and berry production in a single season. No surprise that they do best in rich soil enriched with compost or aged manure. You can add a good organic fertilizer, but go easy on the nitrogen or you will get lots of leaves and few berries.

To save your own huckleberry seeds for next year, pick fully ripe or even slightly overripe, deep black huckleberries. Run them through a blender to separate the seeds from the skin and pulp.

Rinse the seeds from the pulp under running water. Spread the huckleberry seeds out to dry. Refrigerate the dried seeds until you are ready to plant them next spring.

Huckleberry seeds are available from many seed companies, including Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsaverrs.org, 3094 North Winn Road, Decorah, Iowa 52101; phone 563-382-5990), or Stokes Seeds Inc. (Box 548, Buffalo, NY 14240-0548; www.stokeseeds.com).

For a quick berry crop and something unusual to boot, try growing garden huckleberries. They can yield a pie-full of berries from each plant, and are as easy to grow as peppers or tomatoes. All this nostalgia made me think back to watching Huckleberry Hound and eating small, seedless oranges. Now what was the name of that seedless orange, sweetie?...Oh my darling, clementine.

 

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