Saskatoons are the Best Berries!
What is YOUR favorite berry?
Mine for sure is the Saskatoon.
I go out picking them as soon as they are ripe. I freeze lots of them to last the whole winter. If you cannot pick them; you will often find them in farmer’s markets in Canada.
My father would load all of five of us children into his pickup truck with buckets for all and we would go out saskatoon hunting. We would always come back with full tummies and buckets. Back then my mother would preserve dozens of jars of them for us to eat in the winter. I fondly remember those delicious jars of saskatoons I helped my mother make for us; so delicious.
Now I freeze them which is easier and more nutritious.
Our Saskatoon is a hardy plant for the northern climate as it survives low temperatures and drought making it an abundant Canadian fruit. It can live in poor soil and has the capacity to be productive for many years.
A couple of years ago I planted two bushes in my front yard and there are other wonderful things about them. They are full of showy flowers in the spring, saskatoon berries in the summer and then beautiful leaves in the fall.
For the North American Indian people, saskatoons were a staple food. Often tribes held ceremonies and feasts to celebrate the beginning of the saskatoon harvest. The Cree name for this plant is “mis-ask-quah-toomina” which early settlers shortened to “saskatoon.”
In parts of the NW US & Europe; Saskatoons are called June Berries, Service Berries or Shadbush.
Settlers to our country saw the potential of these berries and added them to their diet. Also note that they were an important food source during the depression in the 1930’s. So let’s add these wild and free berries to our diet.
Saskatoons will supply you with important nutrients as well as being so yummy!
Nutrients in saskatoon berries:
- 22.3% of recommended daily iron
- 244 mg of potassium or 10% of daily needs
- 88 mg or 11% of daily calcium requirements
- 20% of carotene
- 16 mg of Vitamin C
- 2.5% of zinc and 33.8% of manganese
- 32 mg of phosphorus or 1.1%
What do saskatoons taste like?
This of course is a difficult question to answer. Although similar to blueberries, they have a fuller flavour and have slightly crunchy tiny almond-flavoured seeds inside.
Picking saskatoons:
Pick the berries that are most purple as these are the ones that are ripe and sweet. The branches bend down allowing one to reach higher berries .
Here is one simple recipe: Saskatoon Crumble
Copyright © Diana Herrington You are welcome to share this article with anyone who you think may benefit from this information as long as you give credit to Real Food for Life by including the link to the home page www.RealFoodforLife.com or the direct link to this post.
6 Responses to “Saskatoons are the Best Berries!”
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so, are they like a cross between a blueberry and a cranberry?
Annie, not really as saskatoons are not at all tart. They are like a blueberry but with a stronger taste and more fibre. You will have to come to where we live as there are lots of saskatoons here.
awesome! very cool you have so many berries around!
Yes Denise it is wonderful; I love gathering wild food.
also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry, wild pear, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum, and chuckley pear is a genus of about 20 species of deciduous-leaved shrubs and small trees in the Rose family (Rosaceae).Here in Ontario we call them Sugar Plums
Thank you Judy for the extra names; I had no idea that they were called Sugar Plums in Ontario.