Honeyberries / Haskaps $9.99 at hirts.com

https://hirts.com/search.php?search_query=haskap

Only $10 shipping. $40 total for 3 plants. I picked up a few.

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I looked this company up. One site said this company was rated only 2.5 of 84+reviews, lot of negatives.

Once you get your plants, you can provide comments here. Also, it may take a while before you know 1) if you actually get the right plants 2) if you get the right varieties.

Often too good to be true actually is. Beware.

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Iā€™ve had ok luck with ordering from Hirtsā€¦

My one complaint was ordering 2-3 other plants to justify the shipping and having the original plant I wanted to get cancelled out on me.

The plants will be small, but given the prices thatā€™s not necessarily a surprise.

I nearly placed an order for a passionflower and a couple perennials with Hirtā€™s a month or so ago. I had 3 plants in the cart and before I pulled the trigger, two of them sold out

Scott

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Yup, Iā€™ll post pics of the $10 yezberries. I know you can find haskaps cheaper in a store in Canada but I have never even heard of them 3 months ago in southern Wisconsin. I paid double a month ago.

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Ugh, I really dislike when this happens! It happened to me this year with Gurneys. The whole reason that I place an order with them in the first place was because thy said that they had Honey Jar Jujube. Well, in the end it got canceled. Had I known it was going to get canceled, I would have gotten the other trees that I ordered from a different nursery.

Hirtsā€¦ I donā€™t know what to think. I have not read good things about them at all. Iā€™m interested in more honeyberries, but I donā€™t know if I should take a chance on them or not. Hummm, Iā€™ll have to think about that. Either way, thanks for providing the information and I hope your purchase goes well for you.

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I have heard of many plants from Hirts being mislabeled. Most stores that have low rating all around are rated that way for a reason. Sometimes there are discrepancies where it will be negatively rated on Daves Garden but have close to 5 stars on google like Grow Organic Peaceful farms but hirts seems to be overall bad reviews.

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Even if hirts sucks, these are just resold plants from proven winners. The quality of that brand for haskaps has been acceptable. Earlier this year I got a proven winners solo and maxie. They looked pretty good.

I had a terrible experience with Hirts. I too ordered their yezberries. Beware that they could be tiny. Mine came the size of my middle finger which was what I wanted to give them. I also ordered Prime Ark Freedom blackberry plants. The plants they sent were thorny which is very incorrect. They insisted that young plants are thorny and would outgrow the thorns. This is not true and the sweetheart I interacted with would not give in no matter what literature I presented. I was finally given the option to mail them back for a refund under the condition that the plants arenā€™t damaged. I had never mailed any potted plants before in my life! It was a very aggravating experience.

I can at least say the yezberries are haskaps. Not sure if they are the true varieties I paid for though.

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I take nurseries like this for a crap shoot. I ordered two varieties of thyme, two alpine strawberries in pots, and 50 pine berry plugs from them. All arrived in pristine condition and are currently growing well. However what you order from them may be of inferior quality. Iā€™m slowly learning what you can safely buy from sketchy nurseries and what you absolutely cant.

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I guess if you wonā€™t care too awful much if they are mislabeled itā€™s ok to take a chance. I really like to have the best chance that something that I order will actually be the named variety that I ordered. I donā€™t think that Iā€™m going to take a chance this time. I have just read way too much negative about this company.

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What does the Yezberries name entails? I donā€™t recognize any of the varieties either.

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Yezberries are just a rebranding of the varieties Dr. Maxine Thompson created. Her varieties have Japanese heritage only. All of her varieties are late blooming.

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The problem with stuff like this is that often they get sold because they make it more attractive to resell (patent/trademark issues) and all the misinformation sellers throw around. One I was looking at on that website stated that they were one of the earliest blooming plants. I donā€™t know you, you are a random voice on the internet, and Iā€™m more inclined to believe you than them.

The other problem is that in Alaska we have issues with hardiness; most varieties that donā€™t have enough Russian on them donā€™t do all that well. Some folks here do have Japanese ones that we are keeping an eye on.

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Hirtā€™s is a very mixed bagā€”as youā€™d expect from a resale nursery that specializes in what are probably mostly impulse buys on sites like Amazon. The last things I got from them (and there wonā€™t be any next things) were a pair of limes likely infected with citrus greening; they didnā€™t offer a refund, just told me theyā€™d ā€œlook intoā€ the possibility that their supplier was sending them infected plants. Oh yeah, I bet they got right on the case. . .

Iā€™d much rather give a little more money to a smaller, better outfit that grows most of their own stuff . . . and stands behind it.

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They probably mean that all haskaps are early blooming. While I meant that in the world of haskaps, these will not be great pollinators for the purely Russian varieties.

Looks like Honeyberry USA is days away from being done with spring shipping. A bit more expensive than Hirts, but what Iā€™ve gotten from then has been good.

Mine (yezberries) bloom with my Asian pears around the middle of April. The get pollinated by bumblebees and carpenter bees. The flowers are long tube-like so the pollinator needs a long tongue to reach the nectar deep inside. They also tolerate freezes very well even when in bloom or post bloom.

Which as a piece of information for a fruit bush that requires cross pollination, it is both worthless and misleading.

Not to mention the cluster fudge game of marketing naming they have created. Dr. Thomson is an expert in the field and as such can create an unlimited amount of plant material. I wouldnā€™t mind trying some of her early varieties (kawai, keiko, chito, taka, and tana) but these strike me as ā€˜made for marketingā€™ purposes, specifically created so a trademark can be slapped onto them.

Plus again Alaska; we need super hardy, super early varieties and things without at least a quarter Russian donā€™t seem to cut it.

You do know that * Dr. Thompson has passed on, right? I would guess that someone has access to her work and will perhaps carry on where she left off.

*Link credited to chinook in this thread.

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I didnā€™t know and that is a shame; the field lost a foremost expert.

My comments were not a ding on her but on the whole system of ā€˜made for marketingā€™ varieties. Finding any meaningful information on these ā€œyezberriesā€ is nearly impossible besides the superlative-laden marketing materials.

Here is the crux of the matter: Siberian varieties are as hardy as they come; they will bloom at the first chance they get and their flowers will survive with minimal to no damage the occasional snowstorm. They bloom so early that in the lower 48 flowers will be out before any of the pollinators are out. All of these characteristics is what makes them ideal for Alaska, where pollinators are out as soon as the days hit high 40ā€™s F.

Japanese are sweeter, bigger, late bloomers, but not as hardy. Everybody claims that they are hardy to zone 3 and yet we see them dying in zone 4. For us the ideal haskap are varieties with enough Russian to make them resilient, and enough Japanese to make them big and sweet.

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