The indigo ones @steveb4 can confirm specifics since he supplied the cuttings. April (most trees/plants are in or past budbreak in Alabama at this point). However, I didn’t take special care sealing the scions. I’ll do that and banana graft next year I think.
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Also following. As discussed in the other thread, with very fragile bark I wonder if specific grafting methods would be best for success… My parents have tons of bush honeysuckle in the woods, I’d love to try this once my haskaps are big enough.
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I hadn’t known what honeysuckle looks like. Apparently we have some growing over our back fence. Lovely flowers. My hasty picture doesn’t capture it:
Apparently some honeysuckle have poisonous fruit.
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@murky
According to GRIN there are 72 accepted species with Honeysuckle as a common name, spread across 13 genera. Most of these are in Lonicera – a worldwide genus.
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I had asked a state conservation group that posted a video on YouTube about removing bush honeysuckle if it would be possible to graft honeyberry to it and they said they are not sure but would still recommend removal because the sap is toxic and will likely make the honeyberry fruit toxic as well.
I would still like that to be confirmed either way just out of curiosity, though.
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jeremybyington, that’s one of the things I’d wondered about when I learned that honeysuckle often have poisonous components. I wonder if toxic sap would lead to toxins in fruit? It makes me wonder what other effects root stock may have on fruit.
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I cut a few scions this spring with this in mind, we have a few species of honeysuckle around. One or more are small and bushy and grow well in the shade, one is a vine and the other one is a larger shrub. Maybe I can Id the species by keying them out with a field guide. Anyway for other fruits I’ve found the best graft to use with small scions and potentially tricky cambial contact is the modified cleft, so that’s what I’ll use. Will follow up if any take.
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Lonicera maackii. Literally under every tree here.
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I did a few of these grafts today onto two species of honeysuckle, will know if they take some time in June and post a follow up. Reminds me of grafting grape or kiwi, a vine with thin peeling bark and a hollow pith. I might prefer to graft vs planting trail side to get the bushes higher up where they’ll get more light. Photo is a modified cleft graft, it cuts into the cambium at a steep angle and gives you more contact than a cleft in the middle or a whip & tongue, JSacadura on youtube recommends these and has some grafting videos with vines.
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Would think chip buds might do well. There are some in this thread mixed in with the tbuds.
Did these ever take?
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I didn’t have any take but it’s worth some more trialing. I used dormant scions in early summer with modified clefts and some whip & tongue and did maybe a dozen grafts onto various wild honeysuckle, I don’t think the scions even leafed out or if they did the leaves dried up before I checked them. I suspect adjusting the timing or providing more shelter would improve results. Budding in August might work better. Using an envelope or bag to keep the direct sun off the scion until it leafs out might help, or maybe grafting actively growing material in early summer is worth trying. Actually looking at my post from the end of May last year, the stock plant already has 6" of new growth - so grafting earlier like the start of May before that new growth pushes and trimming back some of the other stems would help.
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I imagine taking scion extremely early would be beneficial too. My honeyberries are already leafing out as of last week.
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All interesting to see. However from a grower who eats haskaps every day and grows them in northern Canada, keep in mind a few things. A) some varieties can grow 8 feet high and 12 wide relatively quickly. B) the fruit is delicious and addictive so you will want loads of them so a few branches hanging off of a less vigorous rootstock plant will not fill your freezer or your bellies. C) You can strike hardwood cuttings or softwood to grow more as needed, that is well worth playing with. Good growing!
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that’s amazing that honeyberry survives and produces in z1. do they need any special care or do you just let them do their thing? what other fruits do you grow up there? ive seen z2 hardy apples listed but not z1.
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The modern high quality honeyberries or haskaps are very recent products of a number of breeding programs. Being a circumpolar, boreal plant in nature, many early selections have lots of very cold tolerant DNA in them from Russian stock. This has been mixed with high altitude Japanese Kiril Island selections that imparted better flavour and likely size of berry and plant. The most prolific in terms of new cultivars produced have come from the University of Saskatchewan’s plant sciences department. There has also been breeding in Washington which has established lines that have more Japanese blood in them, making them more suited to the lower 48 conditions. New selections are coming on line regularly, more suited to each region of the continent, so watch for selections developed for your region/climate. They all like a good chill period and are very frost tolerant.
In my zone I have to use the hardiest lines Boreal Blizzard, Indigoes and Aurora being a few which can suffer cold damage in bad years but generally flourish.
I choose to cover all 70-ish of my producing apple trees to overwinter them, most being grown in some kind of shelter year round, as even the hardiest like Noret, Rescue and Trailman, all apple-crabs can be seriously damaged by -50C temps which we can get any winter. I hope to see my first Honeycrisp flowers this spring on a 15 year old limb on a +30 year old, multi variety tree in one of my larger shelters.
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i have many of the Canadian bred cultivars and a few pure Japanese ones . mine had seen -43f 3 years ago and had no damage. didnt know they could take -50c. that’s damned cold! there are a bunch of farms growing honeyberry in eastern Quebec about 20min. from here. i live right across from Edmunston, N.B.
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Yes, Quebec and NB have both embraced haskaps in a big way. Its a good thing, they’re great!
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a farmer in my hometown planted 50 acres of them as well. seen them for sale for a while at the local shop n save supermarkets but i guess they didn’t sell because after 6 months they didn’t carry them anymore. must be selling them to a processor somewhere else.
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