The Crafty Cultivator

I have a problem in my own garden with my Haskaps (aka Honeyberries). I saved these plants from near death and one is untagged, I know they are from completely different breeding programs, . But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that they don’t bloom at the same time. Haskaps need to be pollinated by a different variety of haskap. You would have the same problem if you had 2 plants of the exact same variety. You just need a different set of genes, and they need to bloom at the same time. This is not that difficult if you are buying your haskap plants at the same time, as you can choose matching varieties. I just have a special case of rescue plants.

This one (above) I have planted by a Valiant Grape (that also hopefully survived winter), is pushing out leaves AND has buds already.

This one that I have by a ‘Firecracker’ Goji Berry and mystery raspberry, is just pushing out leaves. I actually have the tag for this one and it was a ‘Wojtek’, a Polish variety. Tag description picture below.

So what am I going to do to solve this? Because you need two Different varieties to be able to pollinate each other (neither is male or female, they just need some different genes added into the mix… Same as apples)

At my Dad’s house, I have a good mix of different varieties. I don’t know the names of all of them, because these were also all rescue plants, and not all of them had their tags left on them. We’ve gotten a decent amount of berries for the last couple years, and the plants are really starting to fill out and come into their own now. (I would add a photo of them here but they are a couple hours away from me, and I’ve put off posting this for a couple weeks now. Hopefully I can get a summer update posted about them later this year)

Back to my solution: I’m going to take cuttings from the plants at my Dad’s house and root them to plant here. This is not a quick solution. But it is essentially a free solution, which is my favorite kind. Plus I enjoy propagating plants and getting better at it each time.

I do really want to add in the newer ‘Boreal Beast’, ‘Boreal Beauty’ and ‘Boreal Blizzard’ to my collection. I believe they have been developed to have the largest and sweetest berries. So if I get the opportunity to get my hands on them, I will jump at it, for the right price.

Do you have any haskap questions? They are one of my favourite berries, and gaining popularity.