honeyberry on sale

Millers nursery has their honeyberry plants for sale at $14 reduced from $19. You need 2 varities for pollination. I just ordered 2. came to $42 inc shipping and tax.
anyone growing these? how flavorful are they?

I never even heard of them. Good Luck!

gg,

I grow them, but did not get them from Millers (from One Green World). I now have 6 or 7 varieties and have been getting some limited fruit for about 2 years. Fruit texture is very similar to blueberries, but softer and different shape. They appear to not be as prolific as most blueberries (for me to date), but ripen before blueberries. Taste is similar to blueberries, but more "character" eg a slighlty smokey flavor with some other complex overtones. There is some variance between varieties in fruit shape and taste.

OGW sells a number of varieties and groups them into early and later ripening groups. I've had better results with the later ripening group here in western PA, b/c there does not seem to be much activity with the pollinators when the first group blooms.

I am working hard to increase the number and size of the plants I have, since they fruit during a "slow" time in the garden, and are good to eat. My plants seem to grow slower than you would expect for a honeysuckle and the literature would suggest, and I've had very poor luck trying to propagate to date. I'd like to have more of them as I think they are worthwhile.


One curisous thing is that one of the plants I have looses all of its leaves late summer and goes dormant, then blooms in the fall. This plant also blooms in the spring. Sadly I do not have another fall bloomer to see if they would set fruit.

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I after 10 years, removed my two Honeyberries. I figured that 10 years was enough time for them to produce if they were ever going to. they bloomed and did set on a very few fruits, which I did not find very tasty. I much prefer my blueberries, even tho hard to keep the soil acid enough for them in my very alkaline soil. Just my .02 worth.

donna

ruth- i have been spreading copious amounts of acid fertilizer around my blueberry plants- not sure what my soil is but assume its pretty neutral-
does spreading acid fertilizer work to make the soil sufficiently acid

NO I don't think acid type fertilizer is very helpful in making the soil more acid. I use sulfur pellets, they are little yellow split pea like thingies. I just bought a 50lb bag, which I hope will last at leat two years. I must get busy and spread some where needed. Then I also cover the pellets with pine needles, which are a fairly long lasting mulch. I put the sulfur around my rhodies, azaleas, some of the small oak trees, and of course the blueberries.

Donna

rutholive aka Donna - Last year I had maybe a pint from about 7 very young plants. I know the birds got the first batch of the season. I find them hard to judge when ripe, and before they are ripe, they are not too good. After sampling early on, I left them alone under birdnet until I noticed some of them starting to fall off. Then they were sweet and tasty. I think they ripen over a period of time. Perhaps there have been some improvements in what is offered over the past 10 years.