@BlueBerry … i did finally get some fruit from my two bushes (blue pagota, blue sea) for the first time last year… they were quite tart, moist… but had no real sweetness or flavor… after waiting years to get fruit… quite disappointing. Yanked them.
I planted them hoping to get some decent early fruit… perhaps my first ripe fruit of the year… but nope… my strawberries and goumi berries both ripened before honeyberry and tasted WAY better.
They got eliminated.
Berries Unlimited always seems to have new varieties that they have produced (and have a PPAF). I’ve never ordered from them. I don’t prefer to buy plants that I can’t propagate myself.
Tia i get a 50% root take on fall stuck cuttings with mulch around them. even the smaller cuttings will take. i got about 30 stuck in this oct. last year i stuck a doz. and 6 took then grew about 18in. the ones i put in this fall are a mix of boreal beauty, beast and blizzard.
That’s great @steveb4! I’ve been getting nearly 100% in my outdoor prop beds. The beds are are raised about a 8 inches above the ground and were filled with compost and composted seed starting mix about 5 years ago. There is an apricot tree east of the beds, a greenhouse type structure west of the beds so they are mostly shaded… they get dappled sunlight. The leaves from the cot tree and a nearby silver maple fall on the beds and mulch them. I’m pretty happy with the set up. At this point I’m just propagating Aurora and Tundra, but next season, if my beauty, beast, blizzard, and Honey Bee survives the transplant from this past summer, I should be able to start propagating them as well.
100% that’s awesome. my nursery bed is just my native clay with a layer of mulch.
Those probably are sorta’ tart, but if you give them 8-15 days after they turn blue before harvest, I bet they aren’t all that tart. And, some such as Indigo Yum, Aurora, Kiowa are almost no tart at all…like the average commercial blueberry.
Sorry you didn’t have success. They take to long to bear a full crop load is my only complaint…I’ve not been able to get enough to even judge them fully.
But, I’ve not spit any of them out. And I can’t say the same for aronia or snowball bushes.
(V. opulus)
@steveb4 how does it work in a cold climate like yours or going north to Canada where it may even be colder. What I would like to know is if when your spring begins if you get late frosts or if that’s not as much of a problem? I see you select earlier-blooming haskaps.
I didn’t do the work but a local guy did and has now dismissed all the early and probably mid’s too.
My climate and his are pretty awesome actually. I always watch all the states in the East Coast where the zones are 6 and 7’s and I watch the guys below me in KY or TN or wherever else in the mid-western-states and all their trees wake up while mine almost never get hit with frost. My weather is cold-enough from March to anytime April to keep the buds closed even though they swell. I’m just that tad “enough” colder than all you warmer climate guys and gals.
He’s taught me to purchase Dr. Thompson’s cultivars. I bought them all along with Strawberry Sensation since it blooms with them.
Here I am blabbering away and I can say because of my friend that the early and mid’s wake up in our climate too early. That’s the jist. Do you plant @steveb4 early or mid because late-blooming may not be as desirable for length of growing season or do you not have problems with the early or mid-bloomers? Why aren’t you growing any of Dr. (Maxine) Thompson’s for example?
You make reasonable case, Bark.
But, honeyberry blooms fully open can take something like 18 F
…so other than those one in 10 or 50 year cold springs,
I don’t think the bud hardiness is an issue.
I got to taste Beauty, Beast, Indigo Gem this year. Czech 17 next year. Hope also Aurora.
I’m betting Steve can grow all of them not trouble.
Some get defoliated and look bad here in z6b, but hasn’t killed any yet.
I did have freeze damage every kind of tree fruit crop including total apple failure in 1987, and in 2020 due to under 15 F in LATE APRIL.
This friend of mine is pissed off. His plants are zapped every year blue. I don’t know what to say then.
I couldn’t dig them up but he’s passing on to me all the Boreal’s and Tundra and Aurora, etc. They’re big bushes like 4 feet and three feet tall or wide. I said I’d plant them for nature here.
Yea, he is also blueberry starting an inner city you pick. He has 3 lots now.
I’ve had leaves take 14 and blooms take about 19 and still be fine. They do leaf out/bloom early though.
It’ll be worth your trouble to dig and relocate ‘free’ 4 foot bushes in my opinion.
Good luck!
Maybe try not to put them in the hottest, dryest spot…and a little speckled shade might be good at noontime. But, really, other than drought nothing seems to kill them. I guess standing water on the roots probably might.
Probably 5 to 8 pH is ok…no issues there for almost everyone, unlike blueberries.
I don’t witness any upcoming events/issues. yea, thanks, blueberry.
Dax
Most new varieties are patent protected. I think the MT varieties are protected, and I think the U of S varieties have some licensing as well.
So if you are going to rule out protected plants, what named cultivars does that leave you with? Probably no good ones…
I have a couple BU varieties. It’s still too early to tell, and last year I had a crop failure due to leaf rollers, but the few berries I did get were quite delicious.
In cold climates the bloom times for “early” and “late” varieties are pretty compressed so it doesn’t seem to make much different either way. The U of S late bloomers I have that are Russian / Japanese mixed- blizzard, beauty, beast- seem to bloom and ripen no problem. They might ripen only a week or two after the early ones.
I have a few of the pure Japanese ones- the Maxine Thompson- and they simply do not ripen. They set fruit, but the fruit never ripens. I haven’t given up hope, but another grower I’ve spoken with up here has the same experience. I don’t know what it is- not enough sun? Not enough heat? Whatever it is, the Russian genetics or mixed Russian genetics seem to be the key consideration for ripening in a cold climate with a compressed growing season. I’ll report back next summer if I get any pure Japanese to ripen.
For now I am leaving my Maxine Thompson varieties in place- at least I can justify them as pollination stock for my other honeyberries.
@steveb4 Do you know of anyone in Maine growing the pure Japanese honeyberries? I imagine you might run into the same problems of ripeness.
i just put in a solo and 2 strawberry sensations so ill let you know if they ripen when they fruit. i too noticed the ripening times are compressed up here. all the boreal series ripens up here but they arent considered a late fruiting variety.
Do you know of anyone in Maine growing the pure Japanese honeyberries?
Not quite Maine, but I’m in Z4/5 Vermont, and Maxine Thompson’s Japanese berries are doing great for me here. Productivity is higher than almost all the USask varieties, at least while the plants are young. Our summer temp last year never reached 90F, so I don’t think they need high temps to ripen. It is a compressed season, with the “late” berries only a couple weeks after the “early”.
It would be interesting to figure out why they don’t work as well for you up in Alaska. When you say they set fruit but don’t ripen, what actually happens? Do the berries eventually drop off, stay green but small, stay green but get full sized, or turn blue but never turn sweet? And are you actually running up against the end of the season, or do they just stall out mid-summer?
@BlueBerry … the fact that the honey berry look ripe… but are not for several days… was another bummer for me.
I did not have any trouble waiting on them…a week or more to see if they tasted better…
BUT my birds did !!!
They hit them prettty hard…so all those berries i was trying to give more time… the birds gobbled up.
That was another negative for me… i would have had to employ some type of bird protection to have any kind of success with HB.
If i do try them again… i need early varieties that taste better. I do not mind tart at all… with a little sweet.
I feel your pain…but blueberries, gooseberries, goji berries, autumn olive, raspberries, mulberries…you’ll find fall in the same situation, unfortunately. > Birds’ll get more than you. 
Birds are working my productive Selbhers shellbark hickory husks. They can’t get thru them though, ha ha!
I’ve not seen any recent releases from any of the Haskap / Honeyberry
breeding programs.
Anyone have names of any from past 3 years or so.? That are for sale?
Arkansas? Nova Scotia? Poland? Scotland? Oregon?
