Going to try haskap/honeyberry

I just scored fifty honeyberry (haskap) plants as part of a field trial program by our tree crop association. I think my plan is to plant them out in three or four blocks in different parts of the property, to see how they do with soil types and exposure. Anyone with tips or tricks, or should I just put them in the ground, mulch them and stand back?

They grow well where I am, so they are very cold tolerant. That being said, they don't love high heat during flowering.
Plant in blocks, as there are male/female plants and you need 1 male for every 5 female- I don't know how to tell until berries appear.
Bees help if you have them (I know NZ has lots of apiaries), but wind, ants, and mosquitoes will pollinate as well.
They like slightly acid soil, are somewhat drought tolerant, and yes they enjoy a good top dress of compost mulch.
Good luck!

Thanks for that info Chris. I think we have all the boxes ticked...soil here is mildly acidic, we dry out in the summer and early autumn, and it hardly ever reaches 30 degrees. Spring is mild here, maybe 20 tops and goes from August until December :-)

Bees are abundant and they are out year round. I saw dozens today as I was in the garden, so pollination should be sussed. I will plant blocks of 12-15 so that should take care of the sex distribution. The plants are all seedlings and could have some interesting genetics....

I spent 6 months wwoofing and traveling in NZ, where is Ashurst?

Just a cooee away from Palmerston North. Two hours north of Wellington and right next to the Manawatu Gorge.

Oh yeah, the gorge is beautiful, I didn't get to your side of it because the road was shut down, but I enjoyed a hike on the East side of the divide...

If you make enough berries be sure to contact Jesse from 'Still It'. He lives in Palm North. He has a great YouTube channel on home distilling.

Cheers!

That highway has been abandoned since the 2017 slip. They're going to reroute it over the divide just above our village. But it's a great walk now and already being reclaimed by nature....My son and I went up the Apiti Track out behind Norsewood a few weeks ago and got some nice views before the clouds rolled back in.

Thanks for the tip on distilling and I'll look up Jesse. Maybe he can help with my feijoa glut next autumn (although we made massive amounts of fruit leather this year and that has been awesome).

I just started my permaculture garden last year and included 10 haskap plants. They are not thriving and I even had to replace a couple this spring. The problem, I believe, is that I did not develop the soil first. I amended the individual planting spots with compost and whatnot to sweeten them up, then mulched with wood chips. But now I'm feeling like I should have put more care into getting the poor soil built up into rich soil first, because that seems to be what they want. The goumie berries next to them are doing great, which is part of why I assume that haskaps just want a nice soil from the get-go.

Mine are doing great, but good luck getting to eat any before the birds get them all.

Be prepared to share your haskaps with the birds. One for you, ten for them.

I've got over 100m of bird netting at the ready.

Matt Todd, I have two haskaps in western Missouri. They don’t like it here very much so far, but we are turning into a desert this summer. My yard has had big cracks in it for at least a month. I don’t think we’ve had a measurable amount rain in about eight weeks.

I’m watering a lot. My native spicebush and hazelnut shrubs are close to dying. I haven’t watered them yet because my other plants needed water more.  I will water them if we miss this next rain.

I bought 80 honeyberries, two types, as 1” plugs this spring. They’re potted into one gallon pots for now. They’re too small to plant out for now, my bunnies and deer would ship them right down to the ground. So we’ll see. I’ll bring them in the garage over winter as gallon pots don’t offer much protection and voles will eat anything potted it seems. Hopefully next spring I can get them out and planted. The real deciding factor will be if I can tear up enough lawn to put them in.

I have 4 haskaps planted on my suburban super sandy lot in Ocean County, NJ. 2 are 2 years old and the other 2 I planted this spring. One of the older ones got SO sun scalded, I had to move it so that it had a bit of protection.  The soil is slightly different, more rich, where I put it. I hope I don't lose it. The other old one has some sun damage, but it seems to be pushing through. The 2 new ones, (proven winners Japanese varieties) are growing well with no sun damage. Very sandy soil, compost, wood chip mulch.

I'm is very sandy zone 4b, Central Wisconsin. There are now more types of haskaps than you can shake a stick at but I divide them in 2 broad groups: some are erect and some are more vase shaped. I have both types from Indiana Berries. The erect ones are easy to pick because you can see below the leaves, where the berries are. The problem is so can the birds. From the vase shaped bushes, I can get more berries. I just have to sit down on the ground and lift the branches. You can make cuttings of them. I think I read somewhere that if you take from the top you will get a more erect bush and if you pick from the side you will get more of a vase shaped. I have not tried it, so I'm just putting that out there. Let me know what you think. I'm not aware of a pattern in horticulture or a reason why that would happen, but I don't know that much...
I have not had any problem with deer so far, but they are browsers, so if you give them half a chance... Mine are at the corner of the house, and in the garden, which is not reachable for the deer. Maybe that is why they leave them alone. Turkeys are fond of them and we have a big wild flock [15] that do get close to the house! This year was a bad year and I got only a handful. Last year was better and I made a most wonderful jelly. It was so delicious and the color was even more attractive than the best raspberry. I will be planting more, but in the orchard and the garden again. The deer cannot get in the orchards but the turkeys will fly over if scared off. Planting them closer together may insure more fruit too.
Picking them is a bit tedious as they do not all ripen at once, so you have to come and do it again and again, but with raspberries, they are some of my favorite fruit.

We planted four honeyberry shrubs (about 3.5 feet tall at planting) on southern State Line Wisconsin.  Our whole lot is sandy loam, at least six inches deep.  We planted two in a bed that had a lot of glacial spill rock on top of limestone slabs.  I dug about 18" deep in this stoney area (two feet total depth) and dug it wide to put dirt mixed with horse  manure and peat moss.  The other two were planted on an 8" mound of horse manure (total dirt depth of about 16 inches before hitting limestone slabs with dirt underneath (removed stones).  We watered black and red raspberries and asparagus nearby (and the honeyberries) every two to three days (depending upon rain).  We got  only four honeyberry fruits on one shrub, planted a month before, over the course of three years, before deciding they were uselessly taking up space.   The only other thing I recall as the hole-digger/planter is that the root mass was "overgrown" in the containers at planting, and with roots wrapped in a circle around the inside of the container as often happens with older nursery material, which often results in poor (or delayed) performance because roots have been trained to hug the root ball instead of spreading out.   Due to that root condition, I did what I was told, and made four deep slices with a 10 inch serrated knife through the sides and bottom of the root ball that I had to slice with a sawing motion to penetrate the tight-thick root ball in the containers.  Then I pulled the parts apart about one inch to open up the root ball and let some "air" penetrate it.   The shrubbery part of the plants was always lush greenish-yellow (as seen in Wisconsin pictures), but we got no fruit.  Our fruits were blander than what I anticipated; and I recall reading that "taste" may determine ripeness better than fruit appearance.

We have a few Haskaps that are 8 years old and a few dozen that have been planted since then. This summer was our first experience with a significant harvest of about 8 pounds-- mostly from 3 plants. I learned a lot this year about what makes them happy, so I'm optimistic for future years.
I noticed when picking that the very dense, lush-looking bushes were least productive while the open, airy bushes were loaded. We'll be pruning them next spring to encourage air, light and pollinators to be able to move more easily through the bushes.
I also learned how to pick them more easily. I had started out with simply pulling on the berries, and leaving them if they didn't come freely. This was frustrating because the majority of ripe-looking berries were reluctant to let go. I'd return day after day and they'd still be clinging tightly. Eventually, I developed a method of gently twisting as I tugged and they were more than happy to let go cleanly. I experimented with letting a few big, plump berries stay and mature to see if they would be easier to pick or if they'd fall off. After about a week, half had fallen off, while the rest still required a twist and pull. The Brix readings weren't much higher either, so I don't think I'm missing out on anything.
To me, these berries are far superior to blueberries, so I'm going to keep planting them wherever I find suitable places. We're also going to get serious about growing strawberries.

I unfortunately , have only 1 plant so far, but my neighbour's has a few. My plant was doing poorly this year,  and it was suggested that my plant needed more nitrogen and acidity.  I started dumping my coffee grounds around the base of the plant. It made a remarkable difference.

Steven Wilding wrote:I unfortunately , have only 1 plant so far, but my neighbour's has a few. My plant was doing poorly this year,  and it was suggested that my plant needed more nitrogen and acidity.  I started dumping my coffee grounds around the base of the plant. It made a remarkable difference.

You'll need another haskap of a different variety in order to get cross-pollination. Do you know what cultivar you currently have? There is a slight degree of trickiness in getting two varieties that flower at the same time.

I've grown honey berry in zone 5 clay. Now trying in zone 3 sandy soil. Blossoms seem not bothered by late freezes. Earliest thing to bloom in my gardens.bees love them. So worth growing just to feed them, but I love them too. Someone posted about male and female... No, you need 2 or 3 different varieties that bloom at same time. There are charts online of complimenting varieties. They have square bottom because 2 blossoms each berry. Also called twin berry. Come from small and low to 6 ft or more. Morning dew collects on leaves making them glisten like jewels. Good landscape plant and taste like a cross of blueberry and raspberry. Good luck with your project.