my indigo gem/ treat are in full bloom now. aurora and honeybee is just starting. last spring i saw hummingbirds feeding on them in early may. havent seen them this year yet but havent really watched closely. last spring was the earliest ive ever seen hummingbirds here. funny watching them and the bumbles trying to feed on the flowers at the same time.
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Here is an update of an Haskap experiment that I have been running for 3 years.
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Great experiment!
If you really want to see if they are just “tolerant” or super tolerant you might consider mulching one or two directly with the black walnut leaves for a year or two and see if they are any different than the others.
Thanks for the info!
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Also the husks which have a pretty high concentration of juglone, I believe.
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Has anyone had problems with Bluish Borer on their haskap?
Apparently a honeysuckle pest. I only have 5 plants a few years old. I do have a trumpet vine that has been here since before we bought the place. I guess I will look that over too. I just noticed them this morning. The beetles are very easy to catch. They drop from danger into your hand and play dead. There are a fair number of dead and/or delayed shoots on some of my HB so these may be what’s up. I’m hoping maybe hand picking them is all I need to do.
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No I haven’t had any issues with them. I’m having issues with aphids on the new leaves/growth. Been smashing them like crazy
I think Viktor mentioned them some time ago. Try searching this thread.
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If you prune hedges, vines, fruit trees, etc, you can use the ashes from burning them.
Does anyone know if these brown spots are fungal/bacterial, or from aphid damage (it had tons earlier in the season). Not sure if I need to spray something or not. Only 1 of my 3 plants have it, we did have almost 3 or 4 days of rain recently as well.
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Mine usually look progressively worse over the course of the year, like, almost dead looking by the end. They have always bounced back the next spring. I would guess that its just stress from increasing temperatures.
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Yeah mine got fried last year along with mildew. Was hoping it was something I could spray vs the eventual fried honeyberry plant, since they are growing great right now.
i dont think there are any fungicides recommended for honeyberry. maybe something for blueberry would be good to use. spectracide immunox is usually my go to.
Im thinking about trying Alion pre emergent on my haskap next year… Anyone here using this successfully?
They make excellent jam but I find them to sour for anything else. They are very early to
Most look great in the spring then sickly in the heat. Plenty of water helps. They prefer cool climates.
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Yeah trying to get them to grow as much as possible before they probably drop all their leaves by August 
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Depends on the variety. Most crucially you need to pick them when absolute ripe which for me was one to two weeks after they turned blue. Aurora is ripest for me when it starts to shrivel just a bit. Aurora tasted sort of like black berry jam and wasn’t sour at all. The others had a slightly different taste and were not granny smith level of sour, more lightly sour/sweet. I had one the other day that I accidentally knocked off. It was blue but had not been on the bush for the extra two weeks needed for ripening and had a touch of bitter sort of vinegar flavor to it after swallowing. Not strong bitter, just bitter notes, those were blue on the outside green inside, so not ripe. The other varieties I have had hints of blueberry, but not exactly, lightly sweet and lightly sour, not even close to pucker your mouth sour. Aurora had no sour at all. For my other varieties I don’t know for certain if I got them perfectly ripe so don’t know if they would get richer in taste and even less sour notes. Now importantly some varieties out there apparently are sour or have some bitter tastes. Also different varieties have different Brix levels, some will be lightly sweet other more so. U. of S and Maxine varieties all appear good. Some of the older ones have more bitter.
Not a sour as a Wonderful Pomegranate which has sourness as a big part of its taste, not like Granny Smith which again has sour/tart as is predominate flavor profile. In a batch of blueberries from the store there will always be a few in there not quite fully ripe and they can have a sour to bitter tasting notes, the ripe honeyberries are not as sour as that. And the honeyberry has a taste profile that is not only sour but also tastes that are sweet and rich with their own flavor, blueberries being an imperfect comparison but there are some notes in there. While these berries taste nothing like sweet and sour pork, but that sweet along with sour flavor in that pork dish is balanced and the honeyberry is kind of similarly balanced too BUT each variety has different brix levels, and Aurora was different than my others with the black berry jam sort of flavor. I don’t have the bitter varieties but have read others here sometimes describe it as vinegar bitter. My under ripe berry did have a little of that, the ripe berries from the same variety do not.
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If you have wind issues like I do in Texas it is worth reading through the patents on each variety. They are not that technical but one of they things they mention in the descriptions is the strength the berry holds onto the bush. The ones that don’t hold at least to a medium level are going to get blown off the bush. In windy environments pick out those that hold tighter. You can find the patents for the U of S and Maxine Water’s varieties pretty easy and some of these stay on the bush better than others. Here in Texas, low strength attachments would not be able to stay on till full ripeness with out a wind break. I just stuck with the better adhering ones.
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Well summer heat is arriving in Texas now with some mid 90’s days on the horizon so will be bringing in the potted honeyberry plants indoors till the end of August and put them back out then.
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do you remember off the top of your head which those were? I have solo, maxine and opus from her right now…