What's the verdict on Honeyberries...are they tasty?

-3c is not awful but covering would probably help her if you can do it safely. What happened to my plant only happens when we get a rough snap cold and getting to -7c ish after a warm day and we had 5 days of hard freezes.

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These things are hardy I believe I read they can take cold into the 20’s, the flowers that is. All the same cover as many as possible as that will not hurt them in anyway and may save them. I’m right there too. I’m not worried about the haskaps, my figs are out and no way to bring them all in. That part of the garage is full of various projects I’m doing around the house, like installing a garage door opener, which keeps getting pushed back to deal with more immediate issues, but the door is offline at the moment! Argh!

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Sleep easy, -3c is nothing for haskap. As Richard states it takes -7 or -8c to start to hurt haskap blossoms.

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I had some come through 17 degrees F one March in KY. May have been Pagoda or Blue Velvet.,don’t recall.

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FYI< this is going on NOW

https://zoom.us/j/460436211

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Berries have been slowly coming in for around a week or more but are now starting to ripen more uniformly!

My sister in law was able to try one for the first time and she said it was the best berry she has ever had!

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Out of morbid curiousity, what was “this”?

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We harvested ours last week. I am hooked on this berry, so early, so easy. The kids were thrilled to be picking berries before the strawberries ripened.

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it was a live webinar about haskap,

put down some fabric over haskap and aronia last weekend, these were planted last fall.

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We hit a May low of -5C but you guys were right and the haskap sailed through. There was little bit of leaf damage on the outer edges but the berries held. They are netted now and I’m excited about the harvest.
Also, I took a few off the uncovered plants, (don’t have enough nets to fully get the patch) and used them to try and inoculate a sourdough starter. One day in and it is foamy and smells good.

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So i have had these bushes for 5 or 6 years, trasplanted to our new place last year. Year 2 or 3 i tried them after hanging ripe for 2 plus weeks and they tasted like battery acid. Had to spit them out. After that i had zero hope for these things, until yesterday i noticed the aurora was covered in berries. They were awesome tasting, sourness was very tollerable i would say by almost anyones standerds. Still noticeably tart like a raspberry but not bad. My interest has been renewed for these, im really curious if anyone has reports on the newer varieties yet? Blue banana, strawberry sensation giants heart? I noticed its been 3 years since some on here have planted them. I want to order a bunch more now!

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If you like blueberries, currants or gooseberries, I can’t imagine why not honeyberries.
Plus, you can make wine of them if you are inclined.

I have too many things going on, like 50 or 100 pawpaw seedlings per year, or 100 apple grafts…can’t do everyting. But, I see no reason not to do honeyberries in zone 6 or colder.

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I’m not a big fan of them raw, but they make awesome baked flips.

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been grazing my indigo gem/ treat. when dead ripe they are sweet enough. honey bee has a doz. berries that are almost ripe. will be my 1st time trying them. aurora is starting to color up . indigo treat / gem are 5 yr bushes but no matter what i do , i can’t get them to produce more than a few bowls of fruit each. i may replace them with more productive varieties. too bad as they’re good sized healthy bushes.

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Beautiful field. I’m all slopes and forest :slight_smile:

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I just got back from working at honeyberryusa harvesting their borealis berries. They tasted really good to me with a slight sourness and a soft and juicy texture. The biggest factor for determining ripeness that I found was that not only was the outside of the berry blue but the inside as well. The greener it was inside the more sour it was. I’ll be going back later this week to help pick their indigo gem. As of right now the Aurora are not fully ripe but you can tell they have a great flavor. Next year I should be able to try my beauty, beast and blizzard to compare to my Aurora and indigo gem. All that to say that so far I have enjoyed all the varieties for different reasons.

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I’m also curious about the varieties you are looking at.

my indigo gem/treat are nearly done here. honeybee is near picking and a few ripe on aurora. all are good to me fresh but aurora is definitely my fav. its got a richer sweeter taste than the others.

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I planted 2 Honeyberry in 2016 or ‘17, 2 different varieties. They bloom together each year but never have set fruit. The plants are approx 3’ tall now, one taller than the other. Any ideas on what I may need to do to encourage fruit set? Do they need pruning, or just let them be?

They should set fruit if they are truly different varieties. No pruning should be needed to encourage fruiting. What varieties do you have?