Harvest finally done!

Today I finished harvesting the Japanese seedlings. They do not let go of the berries well on most bushes so I used this cardboard tray to catch the berries that would shake off. Than I poured the berries through the wind of an ordinary household fan and they went into the pail. This harvest yielded about 11/2 ice cream pails. This after about 20 lbs on the first round from 36 plants. One of the things my wife Marg made was a crumble for supper. She based it on a blueberry recipe but discovered that the honeysuckles have more liquid so it was a little runny. The sauce would be great over ice cream!
The recipe for jam: Edible Blue Honeysuckle
14 cups of berries (mushed with a potato masher) as they begin to cook in an appropriate sized pot. Allow room to stir.
Add 12 cups granulated sugar. Cook at a slow rolling boil (stir often)till desired consistency. About 3/4 hour.
Put in sterile jars and seal. Yields about 11 cups of jam. Enjoy!
I also started pruning and will put up some pictures and hints in days to come. We agreed today to have some folks from the Saskatoon Perrenial Society come on a Fruit tour from Little tree Nursery on Sunday August 16 in the afternoon. We will see how that goes.









There are other berries ready or coming along as well. We have a Garrington Chokcherry which is young but quite loaded this year so I have wrapped it with deer net to see if we can get a share for a change. There are also pincherries but it is hard to say if I will beat the robins (aptly named as theydo..) and cedar waxwings are so busy. We also have a good crop of Nanking cherries and I picked a 4 liter pail of those as well today. Raspberries are also ripening but our rows are rejuvenating so the crop is small.

Later harvest produces well

The Japanese seedling nursery produced relatively well as we harvested this week. There will still be another small harvest next week sometime and then the fence comes down and the serious cleanup and pruning will begin. I hope to take some hardwood cuttings to start next winter.
Most of the flavours had improved and yields were good on some plants. So far this harvest has been turned into jam, jelly, pies, and now a Mennonite style cold soup called moos. Trials today! Last year we had another dish called rollkuken with a Honeysuckle filling. Very good indeed. There is a picture in the blog archive. Who knows what will be next! The winner for all around plant is 34 and the winner for largest berries is 33. 33 is on the scale! Looks good but is slightly lacking in flavour. I have found that there are 2 berry types in this collection - 1 is plumb bob shaped and the other is a flattened oak barrel shape. As you can see the #33 bush has the flattened oak barrel shape and is larger, however in overall flavour and dry stem wound harvest the plumb bob shaped fruit are tops. There was also a Blue Velvet seedling in this group with very good flavour but it was only the second year for this plant so not much fruit and maybe it was a little earlier and the birds got them.
There are about 60 seedlings to find a home for before winter so that will be the next project.

Japanese seedlings nearly ready to harvest

The next crop of Edible Blue Honeysuckle is nearly ready to harvest. The flavor is sweetening up and most of the berries are coloring up nicely. One thing about the Japanese selections is that they tend to ripen over a longer period of time. But the fruit is more consistently larger than the Russian types which I have in another nursery and which we already harvested. It will be interesting to see what the University of Saskatchewan crop looks like as I take in Haskap Day Friday of this week. The rains over the past 10 days will certainly help to grow the berries a little larger and it certainly helps the plants.

My big project will be to prune all of the plants in both nurseries down to 5 or 6 sturdy stems as I notice they are growing a lot of stems at or near the ground and this makes harvesting very hard. More pictures to follow and I will try to put up some pictures of the Haskap Day events.

First harvest done by Necessity

Well we spent yesterday morning harvesting what berries were left by the birds on my 2 year old nursery of assorted seedlings from Russian and Kuril source plants Blue Velvet and a Russian cross. Production and flavor varied by plant which is what you hope to find in a seedling population. Some of the Blue Velvet seedlings were very good producers (contrary to what I have heard about the parent Blue Velvet) although the flavors are not good as we are about 6 to 10 days early harvesting indicated by the tartness and greenish flesh. I just wanted to get a sample from each plant so we could move the fencing to the Japanese nursery to protect them. The birds were already into the early plants there!
Here are some pictures taken of the Brix numbers from the Blue Velvet Group, Russian Group, Assorted checks (Early named varieties) and a winning Russian seedling with great flavor and fairly good production. Fruit were crushed with a soup spoon in a small bowl and then press filtered through a #2 cone coffee filter. A lot of piddly work but serves to give a base for the future. Japanese harvest in about 12 to 15 days. Many green berries as yet.
Blue Velvet GR1










S984 Russian GR1









Check group










Russian #51

Harvest and Fruit Evaluation this week

Well the first crop of Russian based fruit is nearly ready to harvest so this week we will pick fruit and take pictures. The Robins and Cedar Waxwings are really enjoying the fruit but I just am not finding the energy to finish the netting. As well, the Japanese planting is really loaded and is more important to me at this time.

One of the interesting things growing from one plant is the chimera coloring on several shoots. Here are some leaves. I have set some semi hardwood cuttings today and hope they will root.

So far the flavor of the Russian fruit is not pleasant to the taste. I am hoping this will change but we do not have heat. We have also been short of rain so maybe that will be a contributing factor. I do know from working with Malting Barley that the uptake and expression of the polyphenols which give the dark color is enhanced by cool weather.

Unusaual Leaves and fruit setting

Fruit is setting and coloring up very well so now the bird net is going up as well! Here is a picture of a plant with what appears to be chimera coloring taking place. I hope to take cuttings this week and regrow these for next year.

Scientific study and more

As the Blue Honeysuckles are forming on the plants, my mind is forming questions which beg an answer!
1) Can Lonicera caerulea L. (and the variants or subspecies) be crossed with another Lonicera such as Zabelii to get red flowers? And not bring along the toxic quality of Zabelli!

2) Will the market in Canada get a chance to experience Edible Blue Honeysuckle as a fruit, juice, or preserve? Most effort is turned to getting into the Japanese market and it seems to me there is a great market waiting for a high antioxidant fruit juice which does not necessarily need good flavour; good flavour would be a plus of course!

3) Who will monitor the nursery trades to be sure what gets sold will actually be Haskap or Edible Blue Honeysuckle? As to breeders getting their money out of Royalties - if you don't have money to back your claim, propagators will just do it and not pay. Case in point is my friend Stan Zubrowski who registered his Clematis "Joe Zary" with the Canadian Ornamental Plant Foundation but could not afford to keep up the registration and now receives nothing for all the plants being sold!

4) Where are the good resources which help in the understanding of the different species of Edible Blue Honeysuckle? Here is a good one to start. Biologija 2007

5) Why is it that the robins are there when the fruit is turning blue and you don't have netting up yet?

If you dropped by to read this, hope your crop of Blue Honeysuckles, whatever you are calling them, is growing and will be a sweet harvest!!