When I first started this blog, back in 2012, I told you about "A Childs Garden". Reed's plants have grown up some now - especially the Honeyberry plants. Sometimes called "Haskap" or even "Kamchatka Honeysuckle", these have just taken off this spring and produced more berries than we have seen in all the other years put together! We have about 12 plants of various ages, but Reed's are the oldest at about 8 years old. He got them from my dad at Snowfire Gardens when he first started working his own gardens here on our farm.
These are Reeds two bushes. They make a beautiful addition to any yard and I could see them being used as a hedgerow even or a living fence! You can also see that we have them growing right in the yard - among the lawn! We take better care of the plants than we do the lawn obviously! They dont seem to care about the soil, ours in this area is clay and gravel and I have added a little compost mulch over the years. They do like to have water though - don't be stingy with that!
Above you can see the other two in this row behind Reeds two. The ones in the back of the photo are younger plants than Reeds and we just moved them maybe three years ago to our site. They are pretty easy care, just water and maybe some compost in the spring and fall. I do take the grass and weeds out from underneath the bushes to make sure that there is good air circulation for the plant. In the above photo you can see on the right a blue spruce tree - we have one on each side of the driveway so these honeyberry plants get a lot of water, as the hubby waters the Spruce trees to keep them healthy and waters the rest of the trees in the area with them. Ours are also in ful sun for the most part and they don't seem to mind that even in the high heat that we just had - the berries did ripen early this year, but the plants are none the worse for the heat!
This is one branch of Honeyberries on one of the bushes! See the green berries in among the blue?These berries are interesting - they produce three or four berries across the stem from one another and only two of them ripen at a time, so even if you pick all the ripe ones one day, you will have more ripe about three days later - depending on the weather! You have to get the berries before the Robins and Junco birds do - they love these berries and they will sit around you and chirp (yell) at you the whole time you are picking!
This bush is one of the tall Honeyberry bushes. The berries on the tall variety are more spread out and it is more of a "lean" bush. Sort of like Jack Sprat and his wife style there are fat bushes and lean ones. They all seem to produce well, no matter if tall or short, depending on the age of the bush. The older the bush the better the production.
This is one of the bushes in the group that gets "tall". Snowfire Gardens has berry "trees" that are about 20' tall! I'm not sure Ill let them get that tall - or that the moose will! I'm not tall enough for that and I may be a little too old for climbing - I already have to pick tomatoes with a ladder in the greenhouse!
The berries are easy freeze, and I freeze them for later uses. Reed, Riley (the kids) and I will be having a "honeyberry jam session" at some point in the fall when we can get totgether and make it happen! Honeyberry is at the top of the favorite list for Reedo - right behind Rose Petal Jelly! See that post Here! We will probably be making some of that again as well - we are almost out! These berries are also great in muffins, syrup, pancakes, etc! Where ever you would use a blueberry - you can use these! And no swamp diving or driving to get them - or mountain climbing!
Easy clean in a colander! Rinse with cold water and shake a few times to bring leaves and stems to the top. One of my favorite things about this berry is how easy the are to pick "clean" It's easy to not have any of the stems and leaves while you are picking them. You can really see how oblong shaped this berry is in the above picture as well.
We ended up with about 40 cups of berries total from our 12 bushes (2 of them did not produce this year - moose damaged). You can see in the above picture how different the colors of the berries are. Some produce a dark blue berry, some a light blue, some are purple and some are royal colored! Depends on the variety - such an adventure!
Honeyberry plants are easy to find it seems in all locations and Im sure you can find them locally - just right for your area! If not Stark Brothers Nurserys have them to order online.
I hope your skies are just blue enough and the berries are bluer!
Blessed be and happy gardening!
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