Rita and Dave, I like Goumi as well, but can't seem to keep it alive here. The plants leaf out too early, then get hit by a hard frost, then don't have the ability to recover. For all the small fruits, the thieving robbin's (sic) devastate my crops. Still looking for an alternative to netting things. Also want to warn people that Raintree sent me an autumn olive that was supposed to be a goumi. Seems that there was a crop of so-called goumi seed sent out to a number of nurseries in the pac NW and they did not catch the problem. Goumi fruits early summer, autumn olive, obviously, in the fall.
Service berry/juneberry is a good one and has nice flowers in the spring, but mine don't look that great during the summer and fall. Don't forget aronia. Highly productive and makes a good and healthy juice. I eat them out of hand, but there's a trick to it. Don't chew the skin, just gently crush the berry between your teeth to extract the juice. The skin is bitter and gives the plant the common name of choke berry.
Run right out and find yourself a couple of Pink-a-blue blueberries that have pink fruit. Not only is the color different, but also the flavor. Cross a blueberry with cotton candy and that is similar to what you get for taste. The plant as well as the fruit are decorative and the robbins here have yet to figure out that they can eat them, but its only a matter of time. Yummy, but possibly too sweet for some tastes, but the kids will out-compete the birds if they get a chance to try some.
Although invasive, Jerusalem artichoke is highly productive and has nice smaller sunflowers in the fall. A winter crop, should have a place in everybody's garden, as long as you have a place you can control it. Surround by concrete and barbed wire fence, then a 6' barrier of grass, surround that by a mote, and you might keep control of it.
Yakon is a very bizarre looking plant that is also very productive. A periennial in warmer climates, doesn't overwinter here but has delicious tubers.
Oca, which should do well in the Pac NW, is a very tasty tuberous plant and a member of the oxalis family. It also does not overwinter in this climate and it gets too cold too soon for it to set good crops here (a greenhouse would probably make it productive here). It's a reddish, oxalis type plant that gets 2 or more feet tall, so is attractive in its own right. In South America, they have many different varieties. Taste is delicious and genuinely nutty in flavor when microwaved in a plastic bag or roasted.
