North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Just about all the edible honeysuckle on the market is from Russian material that blooms as soon as the cold breaks in Siberia, which means that in much of the US it will bloom way too early when there are no pollinating insects.  Haskap is bred from Japanese material that blooms much later and will set well in warmer climates.  Dr. Maxine Thompson has bred low acid Haskap that tastes sweet, and she has selections that have much larger berries with higher production than the Russian material.  None of her best selections are on the market yet, though some Japanese material is out there that's inferior to her best stuff.  She suffered a setback in losing her original test plots last year.  She selected the best material she could save and moved it to her own property, but that may limit what she can do.
Point is, if you've tried Honeyberry, don't judge Haskap by it.  The new Haskap selections will leave it in the dust when they come out.
-Lon Rombough
NEW grape pruning video: http://www.bunchgrapes.com/dvd.html
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com
A video about The Grape Grower : http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
On Jan 8, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Martha L. Davis wrote:

With all the talk on Haskup I am reminded of the talk Michael Mcconkey of Edible landscaping gave at a meeting. He said that he almost dropped them from the catalogue until one woman in Maine wrote and raved about them.  No one else had much success. I'm not sure whether it was lack of pollinators, or frost damage of early blooms (I think that the first ones available bloomed quite early), or whether  it was the growing temperatures, but it seems like people in the middle to southern US should do some research before they plant lots of them.  They seem quite adapted to Northern conditions and the Canadian researchers don't seem to have had any of those problems.

Martha
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