Honeyberryusa order - Juliet

Where did you order those from?

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I got the Julietā€™s from HBUSA.

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It doesnā€™t help you that I can think of, but Juliet is crazy vigorous as a graft.

I donā€™t have a bush of Juliet, but I grafted her on Montmorency and CJ last year.

The CJ graft was a fall bud and looked like nothing until this spring. Itā€™s grown at least a foot :slight_smile:

But if sheā€™s really vigorous own root, I might just be seeing what yā€™all with plants see.

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@clarkinks I could have sworn they told me it was just a $30 or $40 phytosanitary certificate that was needed to import them to the US? They couldnā€™t send all the varieties - only the ones that have been released here, CJ, Romeo, Juliet and CP. Might have been Agriforest I was speaking to, I just canā€™t remember. Or maybe I completely misunderstoodā€¦ thatā€™s possible too :wink: Old ageā€¦ LOL

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I also received plants from honeyberry usa . Like you said expensive ! put mine in gallon bags and into my greenhouse maybe 3 weeks ago . Just a small unheated greenhouse and they have a couple inches of new growth and two of 5 have blossoms . Iā€™m quite surprized

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Just got my HBUSA order. My romeo is quite large as are the currants, but the rest of the cherries are small. (Juliet, crimson passion, carmine jewel, evans, and lutowka)ā€¦ You can see them tucked in with the black currants. Also i got a huge knife in my package, i bet who ever was packing the plants for shipping spent some good time looking for that.

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@Mycorneroftheearth
Yes the romeo they are shipping this year are very large. A friend is selling me a large romeo or two from his order. Im not to interested in romeo for large plantings because carmine jewell and juliet are supposedly the best producers at the moment. Romeo is said to be an excellent cherry overall for the home orchard . Crimpson passion is supposedly the most difficult to grow of the group.

Yeah, my romeo is the largest one hanging out of the box. I ordered one of each and which ever does best and produces the best quality juice iā€™ll plant a row of (really wanted to get some cupid). Hoping to sell fresh sour cherry juice to our turkish customers by demand.

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I think the plants in the small square containers will transplant well and grow fast, just protect them from rabbits and whatever other critters are in your neck of the woods. Iā€™ve planted Carmine Jewels smaller than that, and theyā€™ve grown well. In fact, I grafted a Juliet to one of them last year and it seems to be loaded this year. I hope they hang on.

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Iā€™m underwhelmed by crimson passion. Mine is in its 5th leaf, healthy but only about 4ā€™ tall. My carmine jewel, bought at the same time and about the same size to start, is a big 6x6ā€™ bush loaded with flowers and will yield prodigiously for the third year straight! And Iā€™ve already been able to transplant a couple suckers from it too! I hope to try getting a Juliet next year.

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It appears that a huge majority who have tried them have been disappointedā€¦, I know I was.

It takes a lot for me to give up on a planting. I have the space but they were far more trouble than they were worth. (Heck, I have a Honeycrisp apple thatā€™s been in ground since '08 that has cropped I think only 1 year - a paltry 20 or so apples)

I think CP is the Ford Edsel of the bush cherries :slightly_smiling_face: - lots of hype but destined to fail (most people).

Honestly, Iā€™ve only read a few accounts of folks whoā€™ve ever gotten blossoms let alone actual fruit. (Although in fairness I should probably say that maybe itā€™s just that all Iā€™m seeing is my failure and other peoples failures with CP. Maybe there are a lot of people who have success but I just donā€™t know it, or havenā€™t heard about it. Kinda like when a widget is bad the whole world complains to the widget maker, but if it works as advertised only a few will send the company kudosā€¦ IDK).

I do know that Bernis at HBUSA told me in Feb that their normal supplier was going out of the fruit stock business and they were seriously reconsidering Crimson Passion.

IMHO, I think the sooner outlets stop selling it the better. It just doesnā€™t seem right to offer/sell a known failure (for the most part) to a largely unsuspecting public, who then spend years pampering their purchase only to wind up with a big fat zero.

Too much time, money & effort gets wasted when there are other decent alternative choices.

CP has been out awhile now, there ought to be enough intel that they can determine if there are regions where CP thrives -vs- regions where they do not. If they insist on marketing it, maybe include in the description some verbiage for example like ā€œWe do not recommend Crimson Passion be planted in zone 4 or aboveā€ or wherever it is they know it doesnā€™t work. But to just continue to peddle it across the board at this point is odd to me.

As it is, when friends and acquaintances ask where they can buy bush cherries and what do I recommend - I always have to go to the trouble to steer them away from CP, with some amount of explanation. An effort I wouldnā€™t need to go into great detail about if the issues with CP were spelled out someplace in the various vendors marketing language.

Probably wonā€™t happen though :slightly_smiling_face:

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Just bark grafted Aurora Honey berry to my Blue Belle. Very easy take.

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Well, let get back to Carmine Jewel cherry. last year the birds ate so much of them that the seeds were all over my River Rock landscaping. This morning I was weeding and saw 6 CJ seedlings popped out of the rocks with no soil underneath at all. I guessed too much rain the past week really got them sprouted. I relocated them next to the mulberries and in a few years then topwork them to the larger fruited Romance series.

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These tiny little Juliet are one by one winding up dead even though i watered daily and pampered them excessively. Planting them out in Kansas was to rough of conditions for these weak little spindly Juliet plants they sent out.

So sorry to hear that, Clark. Wish there was a store near you that sold potted Juliet at a reasonable price.

Canā€™t recall who got very nice large Juliet for about $20.

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@mamuang
Its ok im just glad i did not order a couple hundred of them thinking i could plant out a field of them. I have a friend growing some in nearby lawrence ks which is an easier environment with rich soil. I may be able to buy some from him next year or buy from a better source. The price honeyberryusa charged was way out of line for what they sent out and i cannot recommend anyone from Kansas buy juliet cherries from them in the future. In this environment those cherries are a snack for a hungry beetle or grasshopper. Had i known they were not hardened off or awake i would have never bought them at that time of year in Kansas. I thought with the rain they had a chance but once the 90 degree weather arrived and rain stopped it was over they did not have enough time to acclimate to Kansas. The romeo looks ok so far but it had mature wood. Gurneys cherries eg. Carmine jewell are the same size but they come potted and awake so they typically do fine.The drying winds blew today and small plants have a difficult time with that wind drying them out. The wood is still tender and roots not developed so all the water in the world could not save them without enough roots to get the water i gave them. Even if i potted them out its the same problem and i dont have room indoors. This was a picture again of the juliet cherries

HBUSA are good about replacing things that donā€™t grow. Contact them and they will make it right.

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I will contact them but they say in their paperwork they only gurantee it arrives alive.

Something I do is start mine in tree tubes and have had 100% success. Obviously not in same area but may help. Also they push major growth.

ā€¦and that is how you dispose of a murder weapon.

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