Awesome. Let us know your favorites.
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instead of culling them, graft them over to the types you like.
Anyone have any issue with blue banana cold hardiness? My beast, blizzard, aurora, and blue pacific do fine every season, but the blue banana dies back to near the ground.
I guess Iām wondering how do the early varieties get pollinated if youāre in zone 7B? If the early varieties are blooming sometime in March. Bees arenāt out at that time.
I did get two late varieties online this season and I made the mistake planting them in the ground in March. I received them with flowers on it. Our 7B temps dipped down to like 26f one night and the flowers died. I should have just kept them in my garage and planted them a tad later. But when I had planted them I was hoping bees would show up. I did try to hand pollinate them. Cotton swab each variety. I guess Iāll have to wait until next year too see how things play out.
I donāt know where you live, but we absolutely get bees on the random warm days in march here. They love the crocus, among other things!
I would write off aborting the flowers at 26F as a new transplant phenomenon. Our honeyberries routinely shrug off temperature swings like that. Ours are russian cultivars (aurora/borealis/cinderella), so perhaps others are less resiliant?
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I was worried about bees the first time mine all bloomed because they are blooming early March and itās not a problem. I see bumblebees going into all the flowers. Also the flowers dropping are likely transplant. Mine had snow on them while blooming and completely fine, even got below 30 a few times outside.
I have Aurora, tundra, indigo gem, which are all early varieties in 7b
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What are people doing with their varieties that grow outward rather than upward? I have a few that grow like this and I find it annoying- one of them is Blue Sea. I may end up replacing these for uprights as they are much easier to pick! I guess Iām wondering if anyone props theirs up or trains them in any way or if I should just accept that this is how it wants to grow.
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i have indigo gem / treat that grow about 30in. tall. the berries are good but much smaller than the boreals or aurora. because they are the 1st to fruit i keep them and pick only the top ones. my grand daughter and the birds get the rest. theres a guy on here from Slovakia that ties the bottoms of his bushes to force them to grow more upright. i dont remember his name. maybe someone else will and point out his post. hes does really well with haskap.
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Are you talking about Viktor?
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yes. thats him. he hasnt posted in awhile. he has some great how toās on growing and harvesting honeyberries. i want to pick up a bat. powered saws all just to make his harvesting set up.
Are they true to label? The big box source makes it seem sketchy. Also did they have females?
There arenāt male / female honeyberries. Thatās weird itās labeled that way. Maybe cuz Aurora is a good pollinator for a number of bushes? But thatās weird, maybe because they need a companion to set fruit and they called that one a āfemaleā
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If there is a sketchy part, it is labelling them (male) when haskap are not dioecious. However, I have noticed this trend as an attempt to help folks match an appropriate pollinator. I canāt say Iām a fan of the process.
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I see. I am no honeyberry expert. The labeling makes no sense and is confusing ā people would think that an early āmaleā could pollinate a late āfemaleā but if they were not aware of the timing they would have two incompatibles.
Yea. Also some with the same bloom time arenāt compatible due to how closely related they are. Indigo gem and tundra wonāt pollinate each other, I also donāt think any of the indigo series will cross either. They are University of Saskatchewan varieties. They have a pollen chart for them.
Edit added link
Source: Gardening at USask https://share.google/CaQG154vp1cyiGY7X
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