Honestly shipping is often times massive with online nursery. I have found shipping can be far more than the plants. For the reason of shipping costs I try to combine as many orders as possible.
I just got a blue banana and Giant heart from Berries Unlimited after trying them again after this post. The honey berry were actually quite good. The Giants Heart was small but I have come to learn not to expect big plants from potted sales.
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How much for postage?
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Have you tried calling or visiting local nurseries? I found a few places that stock them here in CO. Very healthy plants, 3’+ tall in a #3 container, for $32.
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20 something dollars via FedEx. Of course it was only a few states away. It literally went from Arkansas to Colorado. It was just shipped a 2 or 3 days ago and already came.
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You mean the Solo variety.? (Supposedly self fruitful, tho.)
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All of the ones from my local nursery are labeled boreal beast and they set fruit this year. Dunno how that happened, maybe they’ll self pollinate more than reported or maybe they’re mislabeled.
These early berries have been pretty small, the ones coming in now are significantly larger.
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Are those ripe?
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Some of them are, but most of them are not. They just fell off when I was working on the bird netting. Had to work in between the plants to get it installed and knocked a few off.
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Stark Bros has 3 varieties of honey berry and 2 of them are 20 dollars and they have free shipping right now assuming you don’t care about cultivar. Thing about honey berry is they are rated into different categories. The ones OP was looking for was blue banana which fits into the super sweet category. I got Giant’s Heart which is a late ripening variety and a blue banana which is a mid ripening variety both in the super sweet category. In my research there is not a lot of honey berry in the super sweet row.
If the pots say “Proven winners” or some other trademarked slogan, they probably aren’t Beast. But if it’s a generic black pot, could be it got pollinated at the wholesale grower location and just recently arrived at your local nursery for sale.
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I have a Blue Moon, Aurara, and most likely Early Blue (Gurney’s) planted where there are no pollinators near by and they still fruited this year, not heavily, but they did fruit. I think most of them are self fertile to a certain extent.
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I would think none of them are. After they turn blue they are still weeks before they are truly ripe.
Places state honeyberry is not self fertile but they are so new that who knows much about them so far. I read on a post here that there is so much breeding that who knows which ones will stick out in the future.
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Most reports on ‘research’ is biased towards the purveyor of goods…Cummins Nursery brags on all the Geneva rootstocks, Berries Unlimited, U of Saskatchewan and the late Dr. Maxine Thompson all tell us of the good traits of their offerings. (But, it’s hard to get at the information behind the releases…did 50% make the cut and get released as ‘new varieties’ or did only 6 out of 5,000 trialed seedlings make the cut? And are there descriptions or public notes on the plants that didn’t meet the cut? And might some of those be useful for breeding even if not for release to the commercial grower or homeowner/gardener?)
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Also given the amount of releases and the supposed better quality plants what are we looking at in the possible future for Brix. A few years ago a honey berry in the 20 brix range was not talked about but now it is. Have we capped on brix or can we go into the 30s now with more breeding and out berries with 20 brix seem mid tier. I think I have heard of things like prunes being 60 brix which is why people love them so much. I am legit curious what breeding will be in the future. Like I said all honey berry now could be outdated and the lower brix ones now I would say will almost certainly be outdated.
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Blue insides means ripe, right?
If so, I have had some that are ripe already this season. We had an early spring, had nice temperatures since February.
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