I lost my tags on two of my haskap bushes. I got around ID’ing them last year based on characteristics, and now that I’m looking to reproduce them I can’t find said notes…
One bush is super dense, very round shape, fruits are so well hidden in the ridiculously dense foliage that not even the robins can find them.
The other bush has a more open frame, more lanky branch structure.
One is a Thundra, the other a Borealis, so the question is which one is which :}
Honeyberry USA has alot of detailed descriptions of the honeyberry varieties. id look there for comparisons.
just checked. tundra is the more open bush . borealis is more dense.
Thanks a bunch
You got the dense part right…almost as dense as a homegrown iceburg head lettuce!
Isn’t that crazy? Every year I look at that bush thinking it has no business pushing that much ingrown foliage. I get hordes of robins that would strip clean my other bushes but that are in turn defeated by this one.
I have Aurora, Borealis, Thundra, and honey bee, plus a Berry Blue I’m starting this year. Of those the Aurora wins hands down for bush size and fruit output.
my aurora set fruit the last couple years. added another and a honey bee. heard honey bee is very productive but a little more tart than aurora. have both indigo treat and gem. like the berries but more tart than aurora and not very productive so far. theyre in 4th leaf. put the ferts to them last week. got beauty and beast coming soon. that should do it for honeyberry production for me.
My Beauty and Beast came from Jung’s…pretty tender. I have had them in total shade outdoors for a month now. About 6 inches new growth.
The cost of honeyberries vs the slow return on investment makes them less fun than Blueberries.
they grow 2xs faster than blueberries here. they dont produce as much fruit as quickly but i prefer the taste of honeyberries over blues. we have a native honeyberry here called mountain fly honeysuckle that puts out a small tart berry. been looking to see if i can find some.
In my case I have quite literally mountains full of blueberries around me, I can harvest those by the bucket full. my doggie knows better than to mess with the bushes on the home orchard but in them trails? He loves running around eating blueberries all day long.
same here. blueberries grow everywhere here.
My dog will pull blackberries off with his front teeth. We have more blackberries than you can shake your fist at. I always expect him to get a thorn in his lip. He also eats plums and apples from the sidewalk. I have even caught him robbing an apple from the tree. I never fed him blueberries because I assumed they would be as bad as grapes.
For dogs blueberries are kosher. Grapes and currants are not, and we are talking kidney failure levels of not.
My dog also likes apples but he’s very respectful of fruit on the trees. Once an apple hits the ground he’ll go find himself one. He’s funny with green apples from early windfall; he will ‘fight’ the apple by tossing it around and making noises of disapproval but he will still bite into it. My guess is that green sour apples have too strong a taste for his palate but there is still something there he likes.
I had a dog who had a beef with squirrels and the squirrels would eat the rotting apples so she would also wait for them to rot and then start eating them. At first i think it stemmed from the squirrel beef but eventually she clearly liked getting drunk off them as she would wait and let them start to ferment before eating them. I was worried about too many apple seeds or just too much liquor in general so i would only leave her say 5-10 or so at one time.
Definitely my dogs went ham on the wild blackberries in the PNW while we were picking them.