It snowed so I sprinkled them with ash. I also sprinkle it all over the bush. The branches are then dirty with ash. I do it every winter if it snows. I don’t know what the effect is of sprinkling ash all over the bush, but I haven’t noticed anything negative. If it doesn’t harm them, it’s good for them.
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Mine are waking up already 
saw a tiny tiny green leaf starting inside one of the buds. So my guess is mine will wake up next week fully since we are supposed to have a week of warm, then a week of cold. At least they are frost tolerant. (It’s around the time they woke up last year)
I’m in 7b Maryland.
Mine are starting to flower and haven’t planted them in the ground yet. Just got them less than a month ago from One Green World. 9A
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My tundra has started to leaf out, but my indigo gem and Aurora haven’t. So I’m hoping it slows down and doesn’t get close to flowering until the other 2 wake up.
My tundra this morning, 3/7
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All 3 of mine are awake now. Tundra the most, supposed to be in the upper 50s during the day and low 40s at night now. Hopefully bees are up by the time they bloom.
My Crandall currant is also starting to wake up too. Saw some green poking out of the buds.
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same here. still over a meter of snow covering mine.
OK as promised I was going to report back on my Texas experience especially regarding chill hours and flowering. To recap I am growing Keiko, Willa, Aurora and Maxine’s Opus in pots, bring them indoors in the summer months so they don’t get fried and put them out for the rest of the year. The ones I did in ground did fry when we had a bad (110F) summer hence the pots experiment. The question was do we get enough chill for these to flower here and I now have my answer, YES. I don’t know my exact chill hours this winter but we get between 600-800 hours depending. Since it was a pretty average winter I am guessing 600-700. Aurora is just starting to bloom now, Willa and Maxine’s Opus looks like they will open in the next week. For those keeping track, some of Aurora’s bloom will overlap with Willa and Maxine’s Opus to give you flower timing. I am guessing the last 1/3 of flowering Aurora will overlap with the other two which is good enough for natural pollination. Keiko is not flowering but it was having some unknown problem last summer and lost a lot of the top branches and is now growing back from lower branches. I don’t think this one is a chill issue, just some damage happened.
Also worth noting, in the DFW area of TX we have very mild winters, many mild, even some warm days interspersed with periodic cold days and a few days of freezing. I was not sure if these would come out of dormancy in the mild winter then get hit by a freeze. Nope, these started growing about when our spring starts, roughly so no issues with that either. Looks like pots will work, chill works, indoors June-Aug. works to protect from heat, so I think I am going to succeed with pot grown Honeyberries in Texas. The fruition of my 5 or 6 year experiment. They should ripen before the summer heat in June. Now next question and the final one will be how big can I get these in pots. They are flowering at 10-12 inches tall right now. If I can grow them big I can get lots of honeyberries, even if I can’t, some honeyberries will be enough. Sweet success for one of my wilder experiments with plants I have no business growing in Texas. Sometimes the experiments work.
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Just some info on bloom times for mine in 7b Maryland…
Tundra started to bloom on about 3/14 and is still blooming. Was also first to leaf out.
Aurora started blooming on 3/20
Indigo gem no blooms yet but should be soon.
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Does anybody have a US source or a Canadian source that will ship the Polish varieties? I have had honeyberries for years but haven’t eaten many because the wild life love them😁
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You have to net what you have, not buy more bushes.
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I want the polish varieties to add to my collection.
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Can anyone recommend me some late varieties for a plantation of 60-100 plants in central europe, zone 8b?
I also grow raspberries, gooseberrie, currants and cornel cherries in the same location, so while I know, haskaps are valued for their early fruiting (they are called mayberries where I live…), for reasons of compacting the harvest season along with my other crops for workload management, I need varieties that are very late and will ripen at most 2 weeks before summer raspberries (they start ripening early-middle june for me).
Obviously I am looking at the japanese varieties, namely Giant‘s Heart, Strawberry Sensation, Blue Pagoda and Blue Hokkaido. Are these suitable varieties for such a planting, or does anyone have better suggestions? I have heard great things about Aurora, but it seems this variety is too early for what I am looking for. @Viktor
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I was gonna suggest Viktor, but you already tagged him. He grows in Europe somewhere
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don’t know if you can get them in Europe but the Canadian bred boreal series are great producers of tasty berries and later fruiting than aurora. you probably have better luck finding Russian late varieties.
I bought “Strawberry Sensation” & “Giants Heart” last year to also get some berries later in the season.
Obviously it’s too early for me to say anything about flowering and ripening, but so far this spring they are the latest to start budding out.
The seller lists these 2 varieties as “late”, along with Blizzard, Beast, Beauty & Blue Treasure.
He writes that the “early” varieties ripen at the same time as strawberries, and that the “late” varieties ripen alongside the raspberries.
However, he also adds that some years they are quite similar in timing, both in flowering and ripening…
This is in Norway.
I have no idea how these differences will express themselves in your warmer climate.
Good luck!
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I’m in a more oceanic 8b than you (less temperature variation, no spring frost and not really any heatwaves) where raspberries start ripening about three weeks after the start of strawberry season. My Japanese (Solo and Maxie) are relatively early for Japanese varieties and consistently ripen well into raspberry season, so I would expect the later varieties like Giant’s Heart to be too late for you (here’s a Polish report if you haven’t seen it already).
I have Czech #17 and Honeybee as my earliest, which are not very early by Russian standards but begin fruiting only a few days before strawberry season begins. Aurora is about one week before raspberries begin for me (but my raspberry season is later than yours due to cold springs) and concurrent with the Blizzard varieties. Honeyberries ripen over a few weeks in my climate and need a long hanging time before they are maximally sweet after turning color.
Ripening and blooming time do not seem to be completely consistent year on year (both against the calendar and across varieties) so it’s a bit hard to predict them.
I’m in n. Maine and like you i find some years the ripening times are back to back with no pause in ripening from early July through August. i have a
Oh, I didn‘t realise Aurora is so late, I only read it‘s early blooming so I assumed it‘s also early harvest, but that seems wrong. That may make it interesting to me after all.
Later ripening like Giant‘s Heart is not an issue for me, but I don‘t want to start harvesting more than 2 weeks before raspberries.
aurora fruits right after the indigos here. 2nd week of july.