Harvesting & Baking with Serviceberries! 🌳 🥧 🥰

hey guys how's it going so today i want to talk about service berry trees i think they are fairly underused in the landscape and they're so beautiful they are so showy every single season of the year and they produce edible berries and mine happen to have i've got two in my garden one of which happens to have a really wonderful crop of berries for really the first time so i thought we would harvest some and then go bake some muffins my mother-in-law has a wonderful muffin recipe so i asked if she wouldn't mind sharing it with us and so she did it's an apple streusel muffin recipe that you add berries into whether it be service berries or huckleberries or blueberries uh anything like that so i thought this would be the perfect time to try it out myself before we head out in the landscape and look at the service berries i've got two autumn brilliant service berries out there i thought i'd run over a few details first off there are a lot of varieties of service berries starting off with kind of like the native ones that you would find naturalizing in forested areas and a lot of those aren't even like tree form like the ones that we see or that i have in my garden a lot of them are kind of more shrubby plants and then there are newer hybrids like the autumn brilliance i'm familiar with spring flurry and there's probably a whole slew of other varieties out there but that kind of goes with most plant categories you have like the old native and then you have newer improved versions of that older plant but they share similar characteristics so four seasons of interest first of all i mean they're beautiful all year round in the spring they come out with masses of buds flower buds that are kind of a light pink and then they open up to just big clusters of white flowers on bear branches like it's so showy and so striking and those flowers just bring in the pollinators like crazy and then after the flowers they start forming their little berries so the berries are green and then in summer usually like early to mid summer those berries ripen and they go all the way from like a bright red which i have some representation on mine of the bright red all the way to like a deep purple almost like a purple blue and that's when they're fully mature but you'll see because these berries they kind of all ripen at different times it's not like a once in done harvest it's kind of like you just harvest ripe ones as they come you know so summertime you have the beautiful berries to look at and then you've got the leaves which are kind of a blue green color and then fall rolls around and you guys i can't even put into words what a service berry looks like in the fall i mean the most brilliant orange red scarlet i mean just absolutely glorious my parents actually have and autumn brilliance in their entryway it is the entryway tree that kind of goes over the walkway and i may have some some pictures or footage of when that was in spring color or i could ask my mom see she's got a picture because it's just you really can't compare anything to it it's so beautiful and then once the leaves fall they've got a really beautiful form really smooth gray bark and they look beautiful with a little dusting of snow on them they're also highly disease resistant and they're really adaptable to different types of soil and different soil ph which really benefits us because we've got super high ph see doesn't it sound like something you need to have in your yard i just feel like they're underused both for landscape specimens and as an edible berry because the berries are super tasty so i'm gonna go show you mine both of which are young i planted the first one here that i'm gonna show you oh let's see three years ago and then the other one i just planted this spring one is a single trunk one is a multi-trunk let's head out there okay so starting here at the end of our west side garden you can see the service berry which i actually need to stake it i just kind of noticed as i was standing here looking straight on it's kind of kind of cruising that way we need to stake it back a little bit but this one i planted it was a five gallon size shrub when i planted it and it was quite a bit smaller it only came up to about the top of the stake here which you can see the steak right there and it's grown quite a bit in three years but it's got the most beautiful berries right now gorgeous now not all of them are fully ripe because you can see like this one here is a lot lighter color there's some deeper colored ones and you can wait until they even get darker colored than this but then you will be racing the birds for this fruit unless you want to net the tree that right there looks a little closer to fully ripe berry i think they have a really pleasing look i like the shape of the leaves the color the berries are of course gorgeous i love the fact that i've got something edible here either for myself or for the wildlife honestly like if i don't get to in one year the birds can have adam and it's all a win in my book and these berries after you harvest them will ripen further they're kind of like an apple in that way in fact apples and service berries are in the same family so if you wanted to harvest them a little bit earlier when they're not fully ripe you can do that that way you may get a little bit more harvest without sacrificing as many to the birds when you pick them when they're that deep purple blue color they are sweeter and a little bit more intensely flavored i guess you could say i like them at any stage though i like them at the stage they're at right now i feel like they're still really sweet some of them have a tiny bit of a tartness to it which i kind of like to use in baking so it just kind of depends on when you want to do it also when you let them mature fully and they're that deeper color the berries a lot more delicate so you need to keep that in mind if you need them to hold up in a recipe harvesting them a little bit younger might be a better idea in fact samantha and i came out here last night and i harvested enough for the muffins and i put them in the freezer so the recipe i was reading through my mother-in-law's recipe and it said to use frozen huckleberry so i thought well i could probably use fresh but i'm going to just go by the recipe here and i'm going to freeze some but i am going to pick some today as well a lot of people kind of compare these to blueberries like an easier blueberry to grow and their nutrient profile is very similar to that of a blueberry as well except they actually have higher levels of antioxidants and calcium fiber vitamin c all of those things but look at all of these you see all of these berries they're just beautiful and if you can have an ornamental tree that provides such beauty and gives you all of this food that's so fun the berries do have seeds in them though they aren't huge and they don't bother me and usually like i don't like grapes to have seeds in them they're not like that so if that's something that bothers you that's something to consider and the tree does tend to want to sucker a bit in fact you can see them on my tree see it's trying really hard to fight against those roots of wanting to be that bushy kind of shrubby plant so we just need to come in and cut those out maybe i can do that when i stake it okay let me show you the multi-trunk one way out on the new property it's way over there start walking i just planted these sumacs out here yesterday too i needed to come out here anyway take a look at them they look good nice and here's our service berry now this one you can see is a multi-trunk so what i plan to do as it grows up i'll probably start i'll remove all of this kind of lower growth here because i want them to be pretty clean branches oh i don't know several feet up into the tree so it'll just be something i need to do as we go along but it's going to be gorgeous i mean it already is there's a few little berries you can see it bloomed here we had it when it was blooming and it went through a horrible windstorm and the wind just shredded the tree it wasn't planted yet and it knocked the tree over it was like blowing all the blooms like against the grain and so i didn't really expect much so next year i think we'll have really nice berries on it here's some more i need to bring benjamin out here he would love these i've even considered putting a few more out here like maybe putting one right in here and maybe one back in there so i could have a nice big kind of almost thick shrubby wall however my neighbors have the most gorgeous wall already anyway i'm really happy about having this one out here and excited to watch it grow let's head back to the first one i'm going to pick a cup of berries so that i can get them in the freezer actually i would like to have them in there so i could make more muffins they are so delicious and i hope that they turn out the way that sue makes them she brings them to us on occasion and they're just so good benjamin may want to get in on the baking action as well okay so i've got my berry cup here but a couple more things something i thought was interesting because you might see this tree referred to as several different things so service berry emma lankier is a botanical name you might see them referred to as juneberry because that's when the berries ripen shad blow or shad bush i don't know why and then the berries i've seen them refer to as saskatoon berries or wild plums or sugar plums and the other thing is that service berries typically ripen at about the same time as cherries are starting to come off and so sometimes you'll some people will plant service berries near their cherries so that the birds go after the service berries and leave their cherries alone i don't know if that works but that would be pretty awesome if it did let's see how many we can get okay but first you guys these white ones veronica are directly in front of the service berry look at all the pollinators can you see all the different species going on here if you want to plant a pollinator garden get yourself some white wines veronica i'm not even kidding you these are amazing [Music] now those look like some pretty darn good berries don't they oh i'm so excited now again the darker colored ones are more mature and they will be sweeter but they are more delicate so that berries want to smush a little bit easier so do keep that in mind the lighter colored ones won't have quite the amount of sweetness but i still think that they are fantastic so let's take these inside okay if you guys want an honest reaction to how these taste hey benjamin you want to come taste one of these berries thank you [Music] well why don't you try that one tell me what you think okay it tastes like blueberries okay we don't need to freeze any [Music] here put the basket down in the bowl or you can pour them yep whoa what do you think bud it tastes good tastes good yeah okay so i think i've got pretty much everything laid out these are the frozen service berries that samantha and i picked last night and then we've got regular flour whole wheat flour and apple we're going to use half a banana some flax seed honey baking soda salt cinnamon baking powder greek yogurt we're going to grab butter out at the end because it needs to be cold but i've already lined the muffin tin and i greased them all and then i've got all of my measuring spoons and bowls and such but anyway this is the recipe so sue sent me a picture of it last night and i will i don't know how much of that you guys can see but i will um type it up down below anyway i'm super hoping these turn out just the way that sue makes them okay so first we're gonna combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl just put it down in the bowl [Music] we're going to do a cup of whole wheat flour now [Music] flax seed yes i'm going to do a tablespoon tablespoon of baking powder a baking powder yeah great job okay how much baking soda do we need half teaspoon you want to film the next step step i'm going to put in some cinnamon [Music] you know what benjamin we need to go get eggs look i see it looks beautiful [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] okay bud you ready to make the streusel topping oh yes okay so let's show everybody our batter doesn't that look delicious it smells good too you can see the berries in there and the apple i can smell the honey and now we are going to do the streusel which is brown sugar right here whole wheat flour flax seed cinnamon and butter okay that goes in the bowl yum get it closer to the bowl sweetie there you go perfect you want to smash it i will smash it okay i got some yeah you smashed it good bud good job whole wheat flour three tablespoons now we're gonna do flax seed here we go now we'll do some cinnamon and put it all in the bowl and we're good to go okay once you stir that up with that spoon can you do that this one sure that spoon's great stir it all together good job buddy okay now we need to put the cold butter in here we're going to just mix all of this together until it resembles coarse crumbs okay bud so we have our batter done what we need to do what we need to do is fill each one of these cups two thirds of the way full with a batter and then we do one tablespoon i think so one tablespoon oh no around a teaspoon full of the streusel on top of each one okay they're all done i've got the streusel on top so now they need to go in a 400 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes and while we're waiting i think i'm gonna dry these dehydrated instead of freezing them i think that would be fun to try so this is the kind of dehydrator i went with last year i bought this last fall when i was prepping to dehydrate a bunch of apples and i really like it because one it's quiet so i can have it in the kitchen and we don't notice it so much and it's got eleven one two three four five six seven eight nine ten yeah eleven trays in it which i like and i like the glass door so i can see what's going on in there and there's also a light i don't have it plugged in though so i'm going to need to line one of the trays right here with a dehydrator sheet and then just spread my berries out i think they turned out so good look at that glorious pile of muffins right there and i tested one inside that's why i don't have one for the very tippy top of my mountain here look at that with the yummy streusel let me open one up and show you and look at them on the inside like they're nice and moist they baked perfectly and the berries added just the perfect amount of tart i love it i did ask benjamin if he wanted to come out and try one of the muffins and he said no right now mama i'm good so he went to all the work helping me and he doesn't want to try one but i'll have him try one a little bit later here comes erin though you want to try one well these look good do you think there's caramel in there isn't that good no i like the crumble part i think it's necessary because there isn't actually sugar and there's honey in the muffins but there's also whole wheat flour um is it like a healthy kind of yeah it's got like greek yogurt in it and honey and flax seeds and whole wheat flour it's like half and half white flour with whole wheat flour um so i think the brown sugar being on the top like kind of it's the perfect amount of sweet for the muffin well they passed the erin test we'll see if they pass the benjamin test but i have really enjoyed these muffins throughout the years every time sue brings them over so it's super exciting that i now have the recipe and you guys should definitely give it a try and i would encourage you if you have space to plant a service berry i would do it they are such a beautiful tree and they offer so much to the to you in the garden both as a specimen with its beautiful fall color and the spring blooms and the structure of the tree and then also the fruit it's just an all-around really great tree they can withstand pretty cold areas and they're zone four through nine so they can't grow in areas above a zone nine because they need to have a certain amount of cold period in order to be productive plants so anyway if you live within those zones those growing zones and have the space definitely think about a service berry because they're wonderful so anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and maybe enjoy a little bit of a change of pace with the baking and i'll let you guys know how the service berry drying goes i have them in my dehydrator sitting on the counter and i just set them to go for an hour and i'm just going to check them every hour because i'm not sure how long exactly they should dry in there but i think that they will last a little bit longer dried as opposed to freeze freezing them because little bags like that tend to get lost in my freezer and then they'll get freezer burned and i won't be able to use them i kind of just know myself that way so dried i think is the way to go so i'll let you know how that goes thanks so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 190,810

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: nO4zE5bPYVE

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 19 2021