They were in part shade. And yes being in Texas is very different when growing these. I had maybe 25 days over 105F reaching 110F on several days. A peach tree and pluerry died from the heat and they are much better adapted to the region. This weather is not typical but does happen every ten years or so. The rest of the time it is only100F for 3 months which is more manageable. For now I will be putting them in pots an bringing them indoors in the summer to avoid heat problems, put them out in fall through spring, see what happens: do they flower? If yes my chill hours are enough, if no then I can’t fruit them. If I have enough chill hours then the following year I will plant some outside and put full shade with cloth over the summer months.
Yes, they flower in the spring and sometimes in the late summer/fall if stressed.
Sorry the do they flower question was meant as "will they flower in the DFW area with out 800 chill hours? This was was a question I was essentially asking myself lol. That is a question I hoped to answer but didn’t get a chance too prove one way or the other with certainty. I will be testing this out with the plants in pots, indoors over the hot summer outdoors spring, fall and winter. Will update on this next year as I got some large honeyberries from HoneyberryUSA coming that will be old enough to flower. Then come next spring after being outside through the next winter, if they flower I will know if 800 chill hours are enough. Will update when I know.
Im sure using other trees to provide some shade can work, but it would be a lot harder to control the amount of sun they get than with shade cloth. Also trees will compete for water and nutrients, which could cause your bushes to underperform. With most trees, the sun will either be on or off, where with shade cloth, you can buy it from 30% up to 80% shade, maybe more, so you can kinda tailor it more to what you need, while still letting some light in during those hours that a tree would likely block the sun entirely.
Mine are blooming and just starting to bloom! I thought they were dead after last summer, but all seem to be slowly budding out. I’m so excitedI! I had to water them already… 
I’m going to focus on the plants getting bigger and surviving this year. If they cannot survive in the ground, I do not have time to mess with them.
Mine are planted near two pecan trees. @FarmGirl-Z6A They get mid to late afternoon shade.
@Darby64 I got around 800 chill hours where they were planted. Yay frost pocket! About 100 more chill hours than Fredericksburg.
@TheDerek Yeah, I am kinda worried about them being too close to the pecan trees and competition for moisture with them. That might have hurt them last summer (or all those days above 95 F). But the shadecloth is a pain to put up, and I’d rather put it up on a crop that is more likely to pay for itself (tomatoes).
What works well for me when planting
The layer of ash that I apply when planting under the roots of Haskap has an almost miraculous effect on growth. Of course, I separate the roots with a layer of soil so that there is no direct contact with the plant roots. There is a supply of minerals, it improves the structure of the soil and probably has a sterilizing effect against various pests and putrefactive processes.
Well, mixing granulated chicken manure into the compost in which I plant the plants works very well for me. But not fresh fertilizer from your own breeding, which could burn the roots. I would apply it diluted in water and on snow.
Plants don’t mind a lot of sunlight, but rather if it is combined with dry air - dry strong wind and at the same time insufficient watering for unprotected roots. The plant can protect itself by dropping leaves, going to sleep prematurely, getting heatstroke, or it can even dry out - die.
Under such conditions, I would try to enclose the planting against the wind all around, protect the roots from drying out and, in case of dry wind, irrigate sufficiently, including around the plants, and at the same time also occasionally water the leaves on the bushes - the entire bushes.
Cultivation in 90L containers on sawdust and ash also proved very useful for me, which I also published. They can be moved and the substrate can be kept sufficiently moist. I have already experimentally planted about 20 plants in this way, and the majority are Auroras.
I came up with the effect with a layer of ash under the roots of the plants by accident. My seedlings were constantly dying in the corner of part of the plot. Then I decided to do it by applying a shovelful of ash under the roots and watching what happens. Since then, the plants have really started to grow and not just grow. They bore a tremendous harvest of large fruits. Since then, I don’t plant any other way. I also applied this knowledge in containers where I plant on sawdust, where there is a 3 cm layer of ash.
The result is that on small annual plants, I have grown shoots more than 1 m long, with a thickness of 1 cm. Something stunning that I didn’t even expect. I published the parentage of the two-year-old shrub, and specifically it was the Vostorg variety. I expect that the two-year-old Auroras in containers will also be covered in fruit, because the branches are full of flower buds. I’ll let you know how the Auroras turn out.
What is the unamended PH of your soil?
I haven’t compared the soil pH change when planting on a layer of ash. It certainly won’t change radically in the entire planting profile, but there is a contrast in pH that has a positive effect on plants. The alkaline leachate from ash primarily moves downward and will certainly slightly influence the pH above the ash level as well. I don’t observe any negative impact on plants, but rather, only positives.
The soil on my plot is quite heavy, clayey-loamy, with a pH around 5.5–6.5. I use my own compost, to which I don’t add lime, and it has a pH around 4.5–6.
Wood ash can have a pH ranging from 6.5 to 8.5.
Once, by mistake, I forgot a small pile of ash under a shrub, and the shrub was burned and died. It’s logical because, during rain, the alkaline leachate directed downward reached the roots directly, burning them, and significantly altering the pH. However, when I placed a layer of ash under the roots, separated by a bit of soil, nothing happened; on the contrary, there was a surprising and very vigorous growth. The leachate moves downward, doesn’t burn the roots, but has a stunning effect. I didn’t observe any burned plants, and last fall, I planted around 50 Aurora specimens on ash in the same way. It seems that the contrast in pH between the compost and ash under the roots suits the plants very well. The roots draw minerals from the ash without restrictions, and it’s possible that ash acts as a sterilizer, improving the soil structure under the roots.
I want to find out what influences such vigorous growth when planting on a layer of ash. It is most noticeable in plants in 90L containers planted in compost with a layer of ash 3-5 cm below the surface. So far, none of the plants during my experiments with ash have been burned or showed such signs. If, during the growing season, one-year-old plants in the container produce shoots up to 120 cm in height and 1 cm in thickness, it must mean something. Not just on one plant but on 4 Auroras planted in 90L containers over 3 years. Vostorg is now in its fourth year, covered in fruits, and some are up to 4 cm.
I will continue to monitor this and provide photos of how those planted on ash last year and this year will grow. All of them are cuttings rooted from last year
I will have to try ash with a few plants… I just need to find some wood to burn!!! I wonder if biochar would have the same results?
Question:
OGW says Solo and Maxie varieties are “Early Blooming”:
but Raintree says its “Late Blooming”:
https://raintreenursery.com/products/yezberry®-maxie™
https://raintreenursery.com/products/yezberry®-solo™
Should i just go by what Honeyberry USA says, which seems to confirm Raintree saying they are late ones?:
https://www.honeyberryusa.com/honeyberrybloomtimes.html
Maybe i’ll tag OGW if they want to chime in ( @OneGreenWorld )
I haven’t tried wood charcoal itself under the roots yet.
Wood charcoal ash could be used. I even faced a shortage of ash during planting, so I sought some from my neighbors. Although we have gas, we primarily heat our homes with beechwood. I did a larger planting and used a fair amount of ash for fertilizing larger bushes, even in January on the snow.
Try experimentally growing in 90 L containers as I described above. While I’m from Central Europe, and certainly not in Texas, it’s been working very well for me, and it might work for you too. Sawdust helps maintain substrate moisture. The opening is on the side of the container to retain a certain water level and allow it to be absorbed back into the substrate. Ash beneath the roots acts as a mineral reservoir and has a sterilizing effect.
I observed that the sawdust inside the container remained frozen for a long time, even when the ground on the plot had already thawed. This could be utilized to delay the awakening of plants.
Thank you for sharing your success, can you please describe how much ash you are applying?
I described it above. As part of the standard planting on the plot, I use a classic ash shovel under the roots and separate it from the roots with a layer of compost. I also mix granulated chicken manure into the compost. When fertilizing with ash on snow, a handful of ash evenly dirties the snow.
In the 90L container, I add 3-5 cm of ash on sawdust and also separate it with a layer of compost.
curious the volume of ash you use / average plant? 1 liter or more or less?
3 liters of ashes under the roots of the seedling should be sufficient for its future needs. I applied this dose when planting in the field. For 90L containers, I double the amount.
so most of my plants are in the ground. i have a 2 inch and 3 inch earth auger that I’m thinking about using on some test plants to put ash near them, but under is about impossible. what distance from the plants do you suppose would provide some benefit without risking killing them? at the drip line, or should i go farther away to allow the plants to find it over time?
im going to try the same and just dust some around the dripline. got plenty of brush piles to burn for ash and bio char. do you know how high a ph haskap can take? ive read alot of conflicting info on the subject. i have pretty acidic soil already so i think a little ash wont be a bad thing.
If you have an alkaline soil, I wouldn’t recommend wood ash for anything. It will increase the soil pH.