they are slow growers for me. only about 4ft. wide and tall. i haven’t fertilized them yet. only mulched. going to prune out the lower branches next springing give them some 10-10-10. got about 2 cereal bowls full off of each. they get about 6 hrs. full sun. early morning and eves they get partial shade from my raspberries and greenhouse so that might be a factor. i put in a Aurora the spring of 18’ that gets full sun all day. that one is just as big as the other 2 and gave me a handful of berries last summer. they were near double the size of the gem and treat and much sweeter.
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What zone are you in, if you don’t mind me asking?
I just planted a bunch of Aurora and Tundra this summer. I planted half of them in full sun and the others with other fruit trees to give them shade. I’m doing this because I really don’t know what’s best for them in zone 6a. I read that in warmer climates they need some shade.
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im in 3b/4a. they do like it colder. when it gets in the mid 80’s here, the plants don’t look good.
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So i live in scorching UV sun and my first ones i planted in a pretty sunny location. Those have grown pretty slow for me and i have lost 2 of them on flash warm ups, compared to ones i put in a large amount of shade they grow equally as fast possibly? My next goal is partial shade for a few cuttings.
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I recently purchased 6+ honeyberry plants from berries unlimited. They quickly shipped my order. All of the plants were large and looked really good. They all had nice foliage.
After transplanting them, they look terrible but seem like they will survive. It is not hot here but they have lost nearly all of their leafs. I am not sure what I did to them. I can finally see new growth on these plants after 3 weeks. All of the dr maxine thompson varieties I have transplanted look much nicer. They only lost 20% of their leafs before showing new growth.
I wonder if they grow these indoors so they have a really hard time adjusting to the weather? It seems like there is a great advantage to buying plants before they are leafed out.
Nearly all of the plants i purchased from honeyberryusa arrived dormant. Nearly all of them have surpassed the plants that arrived leafed out.
BTW I am in zone 5
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They are coming out of Arkansas so they probably started leafing out in February…they go through a summer dormancy after fruiting. They start to look like crap and look dead at the end of summer. They will look fine after you go through another winter. When I first got some I thought they all died. They always seem to come back no matter how bad they look at the end of summer.
It has not been hot or cold here in zone 5. We have had perfect growing weather. I am surprised at how stressed they are from transplant. I wonder if I did something to them. The other varieties near them look ok though.
Did you see my precious post? They are already going into summer dormancy. The clock starts once spring hits. Those things were starting to leaf out while you were still in winter.
I just received a package and they look the same as you describe. The shipping and packaging was really fast, no complaints there. The weather is great, and spring is just starting, but those plants have already been through spring. Get them planted and let their roots expand. Next spring you will be able to see the difference.
If you ordered from a northern nursery (like honeyberryusa) the plants would just be coming out of winter and would look much different.
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One of them was covered in mildew and has not had any new growth so, I thought it might be root bound or too wet. I carefully dug it up and it had plenty of new roots even if the above ground part looked like crap.
My local weather in zone 5 has been very mild. We have had like 2 days this year above 80f. We have had decent rain and many cool days. I thought they only went dormant when it was too hot. I will be disappointed if these look like terrible the rest of the growing season.
Yes, it’s going to look like that the rest of the growing season. Be prepared to be disappointed. Sometimes you get a plant and it doubles in size and has a lot of bright green new growth (plant is at the start of it’s growing season), and other times it has already started its summer dormancy and looks beat up and sad and that’s how it is going to look until winter hits.
Next year they will look great and be more in tune with your local weather. It doesn’t matter what plant you get- the first year is always an investment year. You are investing in the roots. As you stated, the roots are growing which is all you should care about at this point.
No one buys honeyberries because they are gorgeous landscape plants- in fact it’s quite the opposite.
One of my coworkers bought 8 berries unlimited plants. I went through my pics and found what they looked like. He thought they were all dead. The first pic is August. Second pic is how it looked about three weeks ago.
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Well, we are almost at the end of the season. How do the honeyberries you got from BU and HB-USA look now?
They all still look terrible. Not only the ones from BU but also ones from HB-USA. Maybe I suck at transplanting them. None of the plants I put in the ground added any growth this year. Most have very limited foliage. Like 5 leafs on some. They are planted in 1/3 day sun locations.
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Well, generally speaking they usually don’t look so hot by the end of the season. I was really just wondering if they survived, which it sounds like they did (yay!). You will probably find them looking much better next spring. I’m going to try to go out and get some pictures of some of mine planted in various spots and post them here later on. Thanks for your reply. 
Edited to add link to posted pictures.
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Post some pics. First year is always a write off year. And then post pics next spring when they come out of dormancy.
@PatrickMD @TheDerek Has anyone had a sample of the berries unlimited honeyberries yet? Curious how they compare to Aurora I thought these were good and want to get more but these new varieties sound tempting too. The shipping sounds unimpressive but they sure make their varieties sound superior.
i haven’t harvested enough fruit from my BU plants to give a good opinion of them but i feel more comfortable recommending the U of S varieties so far, their breeding program appears to me superior, growing thousands of plants to make selections from… id buy and grow a few BU plants yourself before investing in a large quantity
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I was not impressed with the BU plants at all. Small fruit, nothing special as far as flavor. They also have little fruit compared to the Canadian cultivars, or the Thompson cultivars. I thought the Canadian cultivars are the best but the Thompson cultivars are decent, big fruit, decent production. Taste is tart but good. The BU cultivars seem more like wild plants which typically have small fruit and sparse production. If it walks like a duck…
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Any update since your previous posts?
Any updates?
Maybe stress in hot truck during transit got to your leafed-out honeyberry plants? It happens.