Added several Arurora here…and a few others. Only one lost was Honeybee from Honeyberry USA…but I think it’s problem was the soil I planted it in stayed too wet.
B.Beauty, Beast and Blizzard doing ok for young plants.
@Moose we don’t seem to have any insect problems on honeyberries here…just the birds. (But, the pests may eventually come, as they appear to have at your location. Sorry about that, as you should be in an ideal climate for growing the haskap.)
sorry for the leafrollers man. we have them here but they are very rare. last year i had a few but none this year. nothing bothers honeyberries here. mine are looking a little ratty from the 80 temps but still holding their foliage.
I’ve not heard of leaf rollers on honeyberries. Maybe try some Spinosad on them.
Yea the leaf rollers were kind of a bummer. I wasn’t the only one impacted though— we had an unusually dry spring which meant tons of leaf rollers. I would hear random people at the grocery stores talking about it and there was even a garden column in the newspaper talking about what to do for next year. I heard BT will work on leaf rollers. I’ve never heard of spinosad. I’ll look into that. I did spray neem oil and it killed them but by then it was too late. The neem oil seemed to discolor and soak into the berries that survived so I’m not sure if it is the best choice.
Last year the robins were eating my berries. This year I haven’t seen a single robin. I don’t have any berries for them to eat so that could be a reason.
You may try the russian varieties - they are more early. The new varieties from Backchar are very good.
i have the Canadian varieties. wish we could get the Russian ones here.
I don’t think any of those varieties are sold in the US? I think we are mostly limited to the Maxine Thompson varieties, the University of Saskatchewan varieties, and the Berries Unlimited varieties, plus a few other random old imports here and there.
Here, in Europe there are nurceries from Poland and Chech Republic who sell russian varieties. I have different problem - they suffer from hot and dry weather - more than canadian varieties.
I have Blue Moon, Blue Velvet (which taste like a cross between blueberry and guava), Aurora and Borealis which have not started bearing yet. They were easy to propagate from cuttings when i took while pruning. I just dipped them in rooting hormone and inserted into sand in pot on seed heating mat. I started a bunch of currents just putting them in a jar of water so i may try that with the honey berries and see which has more success. I have not had any problem with pests and the birds seemed to ignore them.
I tried honeyberry cuttings in a glass of water in late autumn. They sprouted 1/8 inch roots, then started to die. I then potted the rest, but they all died.
What time of year did you take the cuttings?
I did some in the fall before they went dormant and some in spring when i was pruning the orchard. I am planning on digging up my red, white and pink currants and giving them away as i really only like the black currants and will replace them with more honey berries. I have around 30 types of fruit and nuts on the acre and I am starting to run out of room.
The birds didn’t bother my honeyberries, either, until this year when the cedar waxwings attacked them with a vengeance, so we had to net them. Maybe I will try again with honeyberry cuttings poked into the ground in the fall, not that I really need any more bushes. Currants root easily that way, although I don’t really care much for currants.
Have we determined the sweetest variety yet? What’s the highest brix anyone has gotten and from what variety?
I have Aurora (and others) and was too busy this year to test the brix level more than once. The highest, if you want to call it high, I got on a limit testing, was 11. That’s pretty low.
I am trying to experiment with the flat shape of the bushes. The bushes were cut near the ground in the fall and green shoots were forming, which I continuously compressed with a wire. When they become woody, they keep their shape. The shoots are approximately 1 m long and the distance between the bushes is 35-40 cm. I’ll see how sustainable it is. I have eliminated the occurrence of wood-destroying pests to an acceptable level by frequent total cutting, and at the same time, the rejuvenated bushes have larger and tastier fruits.
This fall, I fertilized some with cow manure and some with ash, directly on agrotextiles. Minerals are leached over the winter and pass through the fabric, all the way to the roots. I spread the manure close to the bushes. I raked away from the bushes so as not to damage the roots and add soil to the manure. In the spring I will level it and cover it again with agrotextile. Older trees were cut to the ground and young seedlings were planted between them 2 years ago. They will start to give birth to me and the old ones will get younger. Well, this is how I want to alternate with that cut.
very interesting, please post updates as they start growing this next spring… What varieties are you doing this with? Are you in the haskap facebook group? If not do you care if I share your pictures there?
Of course you can share my pictures. I try to cut and shape different varieties. I do this mostly for older bushes with a large root system, which will grow big after a total cut in autumn, which is important. So far, the Amfora variety has proven itself the most when shaping bushes. I have yet to see how the varieties from Canadian breeding, such as Aurora, Blizzard and the like, will handle it. For the Vostorg variety, I would like to use a flat bush shape, as it has thin branches and very large fruits. The picture shows the variety - Violet. I will keep updating it.
Hi, thought I would contribute to the discussion. I am attempting to grow Honeyberries in Texas. Yes Texas in all its glorious heat. I am a zone pusher if there ever was one, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. So this is one of my experimental efforts. I planted Solo, Maxie, Blue Pagoda and Boreal Beauty last year in the winter. The Solo and Maxie were tiny two inch tall plants the other two were older one foot tall plants. Well the the weather for the first year was savage to say the least even by Texas standars (I am in 8a). We usually have a decent spring but not this year when from freezing to 90 degrees in just a couple weeks, then the summer was hotter than typical with about 40 days over 100 and several days even hotter reaching as high as 110. It was brutal. The tiny Solo and Maxie never really got a chance to grow much due to the heat and died. The Beauty and Blue Pagoda leafed out fine. Note these are morning to maybe 1PM sun then shade. Oh did I mention we had a drought summer too in this heat? Yeah that hot and no rain for like 60 days. But I watered frequently by hand. I thought for sure this is the end of this experiment for sure. Well Blue Pagoda and Beauty kept their leaves all season not even going dormant. They didn’t look pretty over the summer but did not defoliate. Don’t know if we have enough chill hours, doesn’t seem they know the exact chill hours as I have seen 800 hours to 1400 hours. If 800 hours might work here, if 1400 then likely not. So if you are in a hot location and want to try it might be better to get larger bushes to start with, trying to establish tiny plants may be difficult. I am planting a large Maxie, Willa, Boreal Beast and Aurora in the same location, heavy mulching, lots of hand watering in dry times and we shall see what happens. I do some crazy stuff here but sometimes it works. I shall keep you informed.
I’d have potted them and put on the north side of a building in the drip line probably…but even so, tiny ‘plugs’ are iffy in any climate.
I got a Tana in a 2 inch pot…even putting it in a quart pot under a tree …I think it’s a goner despite me getting the hose out regularly.
