Are some of you planning to attend the Upper Midwest Honeyberry Academy on July 1st at Stlllwater, MN? I am excited about it, as that is practically in my back yard! Plus it is free. Register now.
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I wanted to follow up on this post and tell everyone the latest updates. Im very happy with my order. The honeyberries are mostly still alive. I did lose a couple. I dont fault honeyberryusa for that and did not ask for a refund on those. They did follow up with me offering to replace any that needed it, which was very kind of them. Kansas is Kansas, and our weather is harsh. The majority of the honeyberries are alive and becoming established here. The weather here remains in the 90s every day as it has done for weeks. I highly recommend trying honeyberries. They are not inexpensive though i feel they are very much worth it from honeyberryusa. It was a very positive experience.
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The Upper Midwest Haskap Academy was superb! I donât know if they will do an annual repeat of it, but if they do, try not to miss it. I highly recommend it!
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thanks for this great advice! i will consider it for my future plants that i will buy.
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is anyone who rise honeyberry from seeds? i want some tips from somebody how have some experience.
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When I get plants in the mail that have started to leaf out, I set them in the shade for a day or two, then gradually break them in to the sun over a couple days before planting them out.
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For the early season, I enjoy indigo gem. Good berry with a nice size and a little more tart flavor, but still very great fresh! I find tundra pretty good too, but from what Iâve seen it can be less productive. Still good berries, and that could be change with different cultivation practices/soil conditions.
Aurora is high quality and an enjoyable berry. Boreal Blizzard is a really nice berry, probably my favorite. If aurora is balanced sweet and tart, blizzard would be skewed towards the sweet. Beauty is also really nice and probably my favorite also. Nice shaped berries. Beauty is named it for a reason. They are more rounded than elongated. Will be the later season of the bunch. Beast goes with beauty for pollination. Beauty can be firmer sometimes than the others, which for a generally soft, or complex shaped berry, it is possibly helpful to know. Bliss is also really tasty and a neat flavor. Itâs big, and tender. Part of itâs lineage is from the wild, I think L.villosa. so thatâs really cool too.
The program in Saskatchewan has a new breeder who started recently, and I think itâll be very exciting to keep an eye on whatâll happen there!
This year I planted aurora, beast, blizzard, beauty, and indigo gem at my house. Forming a sort of rag tag hedge, but it sure will be tasty!
My family has really gotten into these berries the past few years. Some of my family got onto the carnivore diet a few years ago and still go to u-picks for them.
The berry is full of interesting flavors, with many variations on the sweet tart balance.
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ive got a patch of indigo gem/ treat then behind my garage i have all the boreals , 2 strawberry sensation and a maxie solo. in the north yard i have 2 aurora, 2 honey bee and 2 others i forgot what they were. they are shaded pretty good from my hybrid hazels so not very productive so i leave them for the birds. love honeyberries! i also have a 8-10ft. northline serviceberry thats 3 yrs old was loaded with berries to the point the branches from midway down wanted to lay on the ground. delicious big berries. very productive. i have jb30, honeywood and a apple serviceberry that should produce next year.
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I have been growing 15 different cultivars of Honeyberries/Haskaps for the past several years in Zone 7A Georgia.
Things to Know:
1.) They need at least 1000 chill hours.
2.) They go through a summer dormancy when the summer heat intensifies. They literally look dead, but are not. Mine get sunlight until about 1pm and shade after since I live in the hottest zone recommended for honeyberries. I would not grow in zone 8 or hotter.
3.) Aside from summer and winter dormancy (twice per year), they also are prone to powdery mildew. But, the mildew does not affect the fruits or the plant. It only occurs after fruit production.
4.) Honeyberries remind me and my family of the tropical Barbados Cherry also known as Acerola, but the honeyberries are sweeter in comparison.
Another way to describe the flavor is a combination of Blueberry, Blackberry, Raspberry and Cherry. Hard to describe these sweet/tart fruits but they are delicious freshly eaten.
5.) Be careful which cultivars you get, Some are sweeter than others and some are just tart.
6.) Mid and late season cultivars have a better chance of being pollinated. You will need at least three cultivars that are the same blooming time for best cross-pollination.
The best info on blooming time is provided by HoneyberryUSA
https://www.honeyberryusa.com/honeyberrybloomtimes.html
A good source of information on cross-pollination compatibility is provided by Berries Unlimited.
Flavor category chart from LoveHoneyberry:
I do not recommend Blue Mist since it has a strong Quinine flavor.
Blue Forest, Boreal Beast, and Pirika have excellent flavor in my opinion.
One Green World is my favorite source, but I would also recommend HoneyberryUSA.
I hope this helps.
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Thanks! This is an excellent post. For comparisonâs sake you liked boreal beast, blue forest, and pirika better than which other varieties youâve grown?
Do you grow these in a landscape or garden row?
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What a score this was. If youâre living in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, check your local Lowes. They are selling honeyberry plants for $13. The size is listed at 3.53 quarts. So just under a gallon size. I could only find early blooming varieties. They only had Aurora and Berry Blue (aka Czech #17) Iâm located in Zone 7B so these varieties arenât really meant for my region. Iâm not sure why they are selling these varieties in Zone 7B, when the resources Iâve read said these are for zones 2-5.
But it was so cheap I figured Iâll experiment with them. Iâll put them in a 10 gallon fabric pot and move them on the side of the house with lots of shade. Iâm currently growing two late blooming Japanese varieties in-ground. The Japanese varieties can handle more of the sun and bloom much later. These mid-Atlantic spring days are crazy. We just had an 80f day and by night it was 32f. I figure if I grow them in pots and if temps go into the 20s, I can bring them in the garage to help save the flowers. I can hand pollinate them too if needed.
The location of the plants are at the entrance of the store. It wasnât at the Garden center which is weird. They had raspberry, blueberry, and goji berry plants in the same area. If you see those plants they are in that display.
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i have aurora and i THINK tundra in zone 7b. mine are 3 and doing great they just drop all their leaves in august and get a black sooty mold. but they bounce back and sometimes even last year second time in fall. yields arent huge yet but this year got lots of flowers despite both that.
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Iâm in 7b Maryland (moco) I have indigo gem, tundra, and Aurora. They are in full sun (oops I didnât know at the time) and they survive, they drop all their leaves by July/August and look awful. Just as an fyi, honeyberries have very shallow roots. So be careful with the fabric pot to make sure they get enough water etc.
Birds got all my berries last year so Iâm netting this year and deciding if I want to keep them or replace with black currants. The few not fully ripe berries I got straight off the bush I wasnât impressed with. But I want to try processing them and actually let them hang for 2 weeks before I possibly âgive them the shovelâ
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If you pick them when they just turned blue youâll probably not like them much unless youâre really into sour grass.
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Last year, I did not cover my honeyberries.
I wonât be making that mistake this year - those birds are vicious (One entire bush was cleared in just a few hours last year! )
After seeing my first honeyberry turn bluish, I covered them.
Insect netting and N45 Neodymium magnets.
Photo taken 4/11/2026
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I grow my Honeyberry plants in 65 gallon cloth pots with mini pine bark as mulch.
The ones that I culled:
Blue Mist (strong quinine flavor, just awful)
Blue Sea (Not Vigorous, small fruit and the flavor was disappointing)
Blue Cloud (Very healthy plant and Vigorous, but the flavor was lacking/disappointing and I prefer to use the limited space for better tasting cultivars).
I would recommend:
Blue Forest, Boreal Beast, Boreal Blizzard, Pirika, Hokkaido, Boreal Beauty, Aurora, Willis.
Still judging: Blue Dream, Giantâs Heart, and a few others. Wonât know until they have produced a few more years. I donât like to judge them until I have had five years of trialing.
3/21/2026 Photos:
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@Fruitsfanatic Thank you! Your berries are in nothing but pine bark mulch? Why do you choose to grow them in pots?
I planted strawberry sensation, honey glen, aurora, beast, and blue treasure (my giant, blue banana, and kawai died). What is the average yield of your five year old plants? Do you preserve your honeyberries?
if i remember right the flowers can handle temps in the low 20âs with no damage. my early blooming indigo series have come through temps that low many times and still fruited like normal.
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mine did just fine with the cold. The bush is loaded right now. Once they start to turn color Iâll net them. That was back on March 12th. Flowers are definitely cold hardy.
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I grow them in Happy Frog potting mix with mini pine bark as mulch. I fresh eat and juice (greens and fruits) mainly.
The reason I grew them in the 65 gallon pots is to give them the best chance to establish and to determine which ones I will keep. I still have one more year of culling out the less desirable cultivars.
Maybe this Fall, I will place some of the winners in ground.
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