I’m placing an order with honeyberryusa for one or two of all the bush cherries they sell. I have 2 questions before I place my order: 1.) do you all recommend that I order the 8-16 inch tall plants, which I think come potted, or the 16-25 inch plants which I think come as bare root. The price difference is only $5 so that isn’t a big deal either way. It seems like maybe the potted plants would be more likely to survive since they are all very small bushes, but I don’t know. What say you?
2.) I was thinking I might throw in a “honeyberry” bush or two, but I’ve read next to nothing about them here and even after searching for threads on them I didn’t see much. So can someone(s) make some generalized comments/recommendations on whether honeyberries are really tasty, sweet, hard to grow, etc. I suspect there is some reason they aren’t more popular, but maybe I’m wrong. Do you think they are worth trying, and would they even do well here in zone 7a/6b Tennessee? Thanks all.
City, this is the perfect time for planting bare root. I’d order the more mature bare root trees and get a jump on their maturity.
Not sure about the honey berry. I’ve often thought of planting some. I assumed they tasted similar to blueberries
I have about eight honey berry bushes and Luke them a lot. They are pretty much like a long blueberry without the need for acidic soil, though their taste is not quite as good as a really good blueberry. I’d recommend indigo gem and aurora.
As far as carmine Jewell goes it grows great in spite of Kansas weather. The honey berries are different as the ones I planted did great until the sun would hit them here and they couldn’t take the sun. If you live in a place with hot summers plant them in shade.
As always, thanks for the helpful information. I’ll be ordering the indigo gem and aurora honey berries and several of the bush cherries. Thanks!
I ordered from HoneyberryUSA last year. I ordered both sizes of plants. The bigger plants were significantly bigger, well worth the extra money.
There is plenty of activity and improvement in the release of new Honeyberries. As an example Honey Bee and Borealis have more heat tolerance and have larger berries than some of the older varieties like Berry Blue. My Berry Blue and Sugar Mountain are surviving in zone 7 but they show significant stress in summer heat. I haven’t seen any lists of heat tolerance. Honeyberryusa has some newer varieties this year but they may have not been available long enough to know their heat tolerance. All varieties should do fine in zone 6 or colder.
Well, the more I read the more it sounds like honeyberries may not be a good choice for me. Almost all my planting locations are full sun, all day. Good for most things but maybe not honeybetties. I’m also in zone 7a and our Tennessee summers can be brutal with heat and humidity. Oh well…I’ll still try a couple and if they have the more heat tolerant varieties that Dennis mentioned I’ll go for those.
City,
In my experience which is limited to 4 years with honeyberries aka haskap the only thing they didn’t like here was full sun locations. If I grew them in filtered sunlight they grew like weeds. I’m encouraging you to be creative on location but not keep you from growing them. Plant them under a big tree you have already as an example. Like a gooseberry or red current I’m pointing out they act like an understory berry to me. Carmine Jewell cherries on the other hand like to be right out in the hottest and sunniest spot they can get.
Yeah you’re little warm! Some awesome blueberries you can grow. You would need acidic soil, I did it with raised beds. You may also be able to grow some of the Service/June berry trees. I have Honey berries but mine are in a very stressful environment at my cottage. Yet to fruit. I need to grow some here for good production.
My honeyberry leaves look scorched in the second half of the summer, but seem to come back the next year just fine. I may construct a shade screen to help them anyway.
Drew,
Service berries are about zone 5 or 6 max. We are right on the border for those. I’ve only found one variety I can grow and tried for six years before I found it. We sure do love them so I’m thankful. Another words I killed six years worth of different varieties trying.
Yeah Oh well. I know the feeling I can’t grow a lot of things here!
I don’t mind failing as long as eventually it pays off. The juneberries stay very short here but produce like crazy now.
Thanks for clearing that up, clark. I do have some places like you described so I’ll try a few honeyberries.
As for blueberries, I am at wit’s end on why mine don’t do well. I rarely mention them here but I actually have about 20 plants…or I really should say 18 spots because every year I have about 5 die and then I replace them the following spring. There have been tons of threads on this site about blueberry growing and I have followed most all of them with not much luck. I’m well aware of the acid needs and I’ve been adding Espoma Soil Acidifier (90% sulfer, 10% benzonite clay) in large amounts for 3 years straight- several times a year. Also, when I planted my blueberries I dug holes about the size of 5 gallon buckets and I backfilled with 1/2 regular top soil and 1/2 top soil that I got from under pine trees so that it was almost all rotted/composted pine needles. I also fertilize 3 times a year. In spite of all this,I have about 5 plants slowly die each year, and another 10 that just sort of hang on but don’t look good or grow very much. THen I have about 6 that look incredibly healthy and grow a lot. As for variety, I have every kind you can imagine…I just get whatever they have when I’m replacing dead ones.
Anyway, I say all that in case anyone has ideas, but like I said, I think I’ve followed most of the tips given here. I have not tested the soil and need to do that, I know. But after adding healthy doses of the espoma soil acidifier for 3 years and getting much of the soil from rotted pine needle mulch, I would expect its acidic enough.
My bad luck with blueberries is another reason I want to try honey berries. So we shall see.
Blueberries are a bit of a pain to grow here in alkaline soil but it can be done. As mentioned aluminum sulphate or sulphur is what I used when I grew them 5 or so years. Finally got tired of fighting blueberries and juneberries have grown here fine. Maybe you are growing northern blueberries further south than they like to grow?
I’ve thought about that. and I know some of my varieties are northern and therefore probably not suited here. But some that have done well are also northern…I just can’t make much sense out of whats going on. Oh well. Anyway, just when I was thinking about trying honeyberries you go and mention juneberries…now I have to go google and look into those! Darn you Clark! 
To make your search easier, they’re also called “saskatoons” and “service berries.” Honeyberry usa has a pretty good selection. St. Lawrence Nursery had the largest collection I knew of. I think edible landscaping has some too.
Honey berry need two for pollination, if you are not sure your area can grow honey berry or not, bask members here for few cuttings, it is so easy to root
IMHO the pine needle stuff should be neutral, composted anything is always neutral. I would use peat or pine bark fines instead. Sulfur takes a year to work. Plus I mentioned this numerous times. Throwing salt in Lake Michigan is not going to make the water salty. You can dump as many hydrogen ions as you want into the soil, but basic soil will pull everyone away in a very short time. Raised beds works better to separate the acidic soil from the basic ocean of soil here. So I would suspect your plants are suffering from high PH conditions. When pH is right, they grow like weeds. If they are not growing like weeds, pH is off.