Nope, I tried Aurora…no takes this spring from cuttings.
I do apparently have some cornus controversa rooting successfully. (A large dogwood tree).
Got some nice plants from HoneyberryUSA…and one runty plug of Tana…dead except one viable bud just above the soil plug. (So much for it being 4" to 12". But some plants bigger than promised.)
Among the goods is one Czech 17, I’ve not tried it before. By the time it breaks dormancy and blooms, my Boreal Blizzard probably is finished…but it bloomed for 3 or more weeks.
I got 1 out of 5 cuttings to root… but i think i did it wrong. I had them in a cold basement all winter long and they bloomed out around February somehow. I think they thought it was spring at 45 degrees?
i think you have to keep them around freezing. they are so cold hardy i think they put down roots all winter. it doesnt take much above 40 to take them out of dormancy and thats why they die if the roots arent there to nourish the cutting when it leafs out. mine were dormant and buried from oct. to apr 20. now im anxious to try rooting other things.
That sounds similar to what I’ve been told by HUSA and Berry’s Unlimited - Berry Blue was a vigorous upright cultivar. It quickly grows tall. Most of the others grow slower and maybe more squat.
What other cultivars do you grow? Are any of them similarly vigorous and upright like Czech 17? I heard Cinderella grows really slow.
indigo treat/ gem are 3ft. squat bushes which are a pain to harvest. they were slow to grow also. didnt see a berry till 3rd leaf . now even at 5th leaf they werent all that productive. will keep them to pollinate my auroras and honey bee. so far aurora is the most upright and quickest to grow. got some berries on them the year after planting. got boreal beauty, beast and blizzard . beauty and beast were put in 2 years ago each had a few fruit. blizzrd was put in last spring. we’ll see if they fruit this summer. all are too small to really evaluate but beauty and beast seem to be on par with aurora in 1st years growth so far.
I haven’t had any issues taking hard wood cuttings in mid-late winter. They seem to do just as well as currents or willow for me when I stick them in my outside prop bed. I am planning on trying to branch out and try some type of bulk propagation this year, but I haven’t decided on what I’ll try.
This was one of my cuttings from winter 2019/2020. I kept it two years growing in a shaded prop bed and transplanted it last fall.
Like any wood-destroying pest, it is difficult to destroy. I use a trick on him so that he doesn’t get to the trunk of the plant and so he would destroy it. If it attacks the twig above, I’ll cut it off and burn it. The infested twig is manifested by wilting buds and leaves.
I don’t think many of the plants get as giant as Czech 17. I will say for such a large plant the fruits were small and didn’t knock your socks off when it comes to taste. It is not to say the taste was bad, but it wasn’t an Aurora or a Blizzard.
I have quite a few varieties, but they are still small. Aurora and blizzard (and I assume beauty and beast) will be upright, but they aren’t ground to grow to the roof of a house. The MT “Solo” seems to be my fastest grower of all the varieties.
In my growing climate I don’t find anything to be particularly vigorous. Maybe dandelion? Everything else it’s a slow crawl because the season is so short. I haven’t planted Aurora and c17 side by side but I’m going to get a c17 this year. I’ll report back next year and let you know how it goes
Yes, that’s the one. I planted it with the rest of my honeyberries- it may be technically self fertile, but if you have other honeyberry plants you might as well make sure it has cross pollination (and also helps pollinate the other cultivars). Of all my honeyberries, that one has put out the most growth.
The biggest indicator of ripeness is going to be the color inside the berry. If it’s green then it’s likely unripe and sour. A rule of thumb to start with is to let them hang at least a couple weeks after they first start to color.
If it has dropped, it isn’t going to improve much so might just as well eat it. But, on the bush, they do improve in ripeness and flavor…but don’t push your luck and procrastinate till they"re all laying on the ground __ or a bird has eaten them all.
@BlueBerry & @roth2000 — I thought more about the possibility of a bird getting my berry before it was truly ripe… and I took some flash tape, string, etc … out there to hopefully deter the birds…
That was early this morning… and noticed that blue berry was gone already. Not on the bush anyway… but I did find it laying on the ground. Not sure if it dropped on it’s own or if some critter knocked it off.
I tried it at lunch time… yuck… not even close to ripe.
My fruit set is light… may have 20 more berries out there. Hopefully I get to try a ripe one this year.
I have several ripe strawberries now, so honeyberries are not such a big deal.
In some varieties, the fruit tends to fall off even if they are not fully ripe. In windy weather you know some fallen to the ground. The fact that they start to fall easily is not always a sign of full maturity.
Better to throw the net and let it ripen properly. Only then are they excellent.
