My five year old HB has been surprisingly prolific with flowers this year. It opened its first one over a month ago, has been flowering steadily, and there are many buds yet to open among the tiny green berries. Even a few buds on some of this year’s new growth which has just started. My four year old HB has heaps of flowers too, although it started 10 days later. There are bumblebees visiting every day now too, and ignoring my dandelions that I let flower, just going directly for the honeyberry flowers. The older bush had a lot of new growth last year, but was very slow until then. I think it’s the newer growth that’s pushing all the flowers.
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I planted six different varieties last spring. They all pulled through and are leafing out just fine but have barely grown at all. Will they do more in their second or third year???
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In my experience, they do most of their growth just after flowering, and before the fruit ripens. If the summer hasn’t been too hot and dry they go through another growth spell in late summer or early autumn, before the leaves drop. Yours probably were just settling in last year, and might put on a bit of growth this year. Have you applied any fertilisers yet?
I am thinking it’s the varieties you chose that are not vigorous?
I have Aurora, Boreal Beast, Boreal Beauty, Honeybee, Blue Moon, and Tundra. I’ll give then some chemical fertilizer and composted manure later today for a boost.
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The genetics of those cultivars have sufficient vigor. I don’t have Honeybee, yet.
Good luck.
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At the very least one of the 3 blooms on BLIZZARD is a viable berry…I think probably Indigo Treat too…but it’s located in the middle of some pots and I’ll check later.
So, yes, these do pollinate each other here (unless they are self pollinating).
Edit:
*Indigo Treat has berries. Blzzard the only other honeyberry to bloom this year.
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Mine finally started to show some growth and are budding out as well. I hope they leap this year.
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No flowers yet on mine, but they are budding out, got down to 7f this morning, hopefully the buds dont die but Im not hopeful…
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mine dont flower / leaf out until the snows gone so probably another week or so here.
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Because you all have so much experience, I am hoping you can bail me out.
I planted a tundra and a sugar mountain blue that I bought from HBUSA in 2019. One of them died (I think) that year and the other one has had a hard battle against the rabbits. Now that I have more of a handle on my backyard, I’m wanting to get a replacement for the probably actually dead one, but I can’t figure out which one survived thanks to a helpful garden helper who “decorated” with all the tags they found.
This is the survivor. It doesn’t look like the tundra internet pictures to me but neither does the pictures of sugar mountain… I have zero berry information.
To make things more compliacted, can someone please confirm this little plant IS NOT a haskap even though it is growing in the EXACT same spot that the haskap was planted and doesn’t resemble anything around it? I know it isn’t but…
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First flowers on my honeyberry this week. I hope it’s little friend decides to flower too.
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I will say that it is sadly common for nurseries to use photos that do not actually depict the specific cultivar being listed. They just get a random picture of the correct species from which the cultivar is from (or worse sometimes a picture of a completely different species). Therefore I wouldn’t use nursery images for comparison.
The second picture looks very Rosaceae to me. My first thought is some sort of Malus, but I woudn’t rule out Prunus off that one picture alone.
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Top pix may be Tundra. I had one for couple seasons then sold it.
Could the second picture be more than one seedling plant in a group? Apple possibly?
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If you are not sure which variety is alive, why not just plant a third kind so you don’t end up with duplicates. Just check the blooming time so they match. HBUSA lists bloom times on their site.
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Thank you! Those are very good points. I will just go get a third in the same bloom time and label the survivor with a tundra/sugar mountain and move on. I think I was overthinking it and that solves that problem.
It hadn’t occured to me that the photos wouldn’t be specific. Thank you!
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Not sure if there is still any doubt, but the OP’s 2nd pic had leaves with a saw tooth edge on them. None of the honeyberries that I have seen have that. They all are smooth edge. Based on that alone, I would doubt that second pic is a honeyberry.
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I think the berries on Sugar Mt Blue are larger than Tundra, but if you have nothing to compare them to, that probably doesn’t help much.
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