Blue banana has gone worldwide. You can get it a few places here in the US now too, including HoneyberryUSA.
how does it grow for you? it should get pollinated by all the ones i already have.
I’ll get some pictures later and post them. I have a blue banana growing next to a honey beast. So far I have been happy with it. On a taste test of blue banana vs honey beast I would pick blue banana.
good to know. i just ordered one from HBUSA.
I got my first significant harvest. Hopefully I’ll get several half-pints of jam out of it. We picked more than half of them before I got too hot. I should have started earlier in the day. Got about a gallon that I’m rinsing and freezing individually for later use.
The net seems a success. No birds trapped or killed so far. I’m glad I pruned them so that the fruit is between knee height and 8 feet.
The first two pics are of a blue banana plant that is a couple years old. We had some friends over and their kids ran around eating some of the berries, not knowing what was what, and both kids landed on that bush (blue banana) as the best tasting one.
Last pic is a blue banana plug I got from HBUSA about two weeks ago. Right after I planted it we had high winds for about 5 days straight.
i dont know how well they grow there but honeyberries grow very well here. even better than blueberries. the most vigorous ones set some fruit in the 2nd year from a plug. i rarely fertilize and they grow really well. my biggest right now is one of the boreals. think its beast. over 6ft. very upright growth. its growing where my old goat pen used to be and its only on its 3rd year. should start to fill out next year. looking forward to blue bannana.
I think you will like it. I hope to try it side by side this year with blizzard and aurora.
I don’t know how it would compare to a Japanese variety since they don’t ripen for me, but I have heard those are sweet too.
My honeyberries are infested with leaf rollers again. You will read that the plants are pest free, which definitely isn’t true. I usually don’t get bird pressure, but I do get caterpillar pressure. I think they come off the birch trees which are everywhere. If you don’t spray BT, they will completely destroy every piece of fruit.
How do they taste? Are those the trial version / unreleased MT varieties?
Mine would get the green aphids
Mostly correct. I know at least one was since released. I was able to read the tags on two or 3 of them and google turned one up. Looks like I found my notes from 2017:
3 of the 5 are
22-14
41-75 Chito
88-92
They are all varying degrees of well on the tart side of balanced. Maybe 10% were starting to get close to the range of good palatability fresh.
I’m afraid to let them go too long and then find that they’ve all dropped or something. In the past the birds were getting them all and I guess I’m not over that yet
But now that I’ve got maybe 5lbs in the freezer perhaps I can see if they continue to sweeten. We are also in the midst of a couple of days of upper 90s temperature for the first time this year.
Sounds like I could have picked Chito a little early, normally ripened next week in Corvallis according to this, and averages 13 brix, sounds about right. I haven’t measured: Buy Chito - Haskap & Honeyberries - Maxine Thompson Varieties
i get leaf rollers too but they rarely cause enough damage to warrant spraying.
Someone wanna tell my honeyberry it’s June and not the start of March put out new growth with flowers, thing is so confused! Even looked pollenated. Probably gonna get zapped by heatwave in a few weeks.
So when you picked them, 90% were not good for fresh eating? Now that you figured out the net, next year you can get closer to 100%.
I’d say 100% weren’t very good for fresh eating unless you like sour. 10% were showing some promise
I pulled an arbitrary one from the freezer today and measured brix at 18. So it isn’t a lack of sugar.
edit 6/12/25: I tried a few last night and they were much better than the week earlier. This is 10+ days after full dark color. Maybe 3 for 3 all palatable and better than any of the ones I tried last weekend.