Too Many Common Names

[greenstorm]

I've been listing my multivariety tests here, so. Haskaps (also called honeyberries or I think they have about a thousand other common names) are a pretty hardy berry in the honeysuckle family that was grown a little in Japan and Russia. A number of years ago the University of Saskatchewan and then a couple places in the states started breeding them, to alter the only moderately palatable berry and kind of inconvenient growth form into a potentially commercial berry.

They don't grow well where most people live -- my understanding is that in zone 8 or higher, maybe even zone 7, they perform poorly. But they are very happy campers up here, even surviving a couple years in 1 gallon containers through the winter. Their flowers are frost-resistant down to -7, so a late frost doesn't destroy the crop, and most of the berries are done by July. My observation is that hummingbirds love the yellow elongated bell-shaped flowers, and they do seem to bloom about when the hummingbirds come through.

They don't self-pollinate, so you need a couple, and they don't all bloom at the same time so if you get only a couple you need to be sure they bloom in the same window.

I got a couple haskap bushes awhile back, but this year I treated myself to some plugs of many varieties. They're going to end up in the west side of the pigpen. Here's what I have, with breeder. They're in plugs unless otherwise specified.

Haskap/honeyberry varieties:

Borealis (1 gal) (U Sask)
Tundra (1 gal) (U Sask)
Boreal Blizzard (U Sask)
Boreal Beast (U Sask)
Boreal Beauty (U Sask)
Blue Treasure (Berries Unlimited)
Aurora (U Sask)
Honey Bee (U Sask)
Blue Banana (Berries Unlimited)
Wojtek (Polish)
Giant's Heart (Berries Unlimited)
Strawberry Sensation (Berries Unlimited)
Zojka (Polish)
Kapu (Maxine Thompson)
Tana (Maxine Thompson)
Berry Blue (Russian)

Comments

[yarrowkat]

i have never even heard of them, which suggests to me that they are not hardy in Zone 7. :) wikipedia says they prefer "cool temperate" climates, and zone 7 is characterized by both months of winter frost and significant summer heat.

[greenstorm]

Vancouver is technically a zone 8, but it never really got warm in the summer, noteworthy on days that got up to 30C/86F. I know our zone 7s up here don't tend to be that warm in summer either. In fact our warmest-in-summer areas are zones 5/6!

The Canadian and American zoning systems are slightly different, too. One is based only on minimum temperature, the other takes into account total heat hours a little bit. I do not remember which, off the cuff. So in a maritime environment where the ocean keeps the mimimum temperature up in winter and down in summer, you might have a much different zone 7 than inland -- that's what was so disappointing about Vancouver's "zone 8" where I could barely ripen tomatoes. In the end I guess we shouldn't ask too much description from one number: haskaps don't survive high heat, they fruit well in places with cool summers, and they need at least some time in the winter below freezing.

It'll be interesting to see how they do with marketing, and breeding shippability into the fruit. I think kiwis are the last fruit I remember that really broke into the market in a big way.

[yarrowkat]

i would likewise be pretty sad if i moved to Zone 8 and couldn't ripen tomatoes. i think the US system is based on minimum temp/ cooling hours and does not much account for heat. i used to use the Sunset Western Garden Book's zone system more - but it's been so long I've forgotten most of it now. It has something like 25 zones and quite a lot more nuance.

[greenstorm]

That sounds like a useful system. We have a really good one for forest ecosystems here ("biogeoclimatic zones") but not so great for gardening.