Some late blooms and tall plants

Well you would have thought the blooming season was over for Blue Honeysuckle but there are at least 5 or more plants with new blossoms. One of the plants with new blossoms is this 1 1/2 year old plant. It is a very tall seedling and comes from seeds from a Polish source. Other seedlings from this source are also showing good growth but not to this extent.
Seedlings from wild collected seed from a Magadan Russian source are doing the poorest and I suspect our soil is too alkaline compared to the source area.
So far I have not gotten to the pruning which needs to be done on 2 - 4 year old plants so I am hoping the season will last a little longer before the snow comes.

There are about 100 plants in 3 litre pots as well as a few smaller pots to be planted or re-potted . A little piece of old pasture land would be very nice at this point in time!
There are 7-9 populations of collected seed waiting for the winter planting under lights.

This is the neat part of the project!

I have had several conversations over the past days about the future of Blue Honeysuckle (Haskap if you have the University named varieties) on the Canadian Prairies. As with most new crops, there is a real excitement at all levels. And as with many new crops there are many imaginative plans made, ideas cast into the mix, and entities become involved. Having lived through the early days of rapeseed processing and then canola, I can say that it will be those who care for the crop and are good, conscientious growers who will make this product find a niche in the marketplace.

Much needs to be learned about growing and management and this will separate the producers from the gardeners in terms of plantings any where in Canada. Blue honeysuckle is definitely a home gardeners fruit but has serious potential in the areas of juice, neutrceuticals, and dried fruit on a much larger scale. A Google search of Blue Honeysuckle and neutraceutical brings to the surface a number of scientific articles worth reading.
Be a grower!

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.