Lonicera caerulea
Origin: China
Improvement Status: Unknown
Seeds per packet: ~50
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
Haskaps, or honeyberries, are the phenomenally delicious berries of this extremely cold-hardy honeysuckle from Siberia and elsewhere across the northern hemisphere (including western North America). Also called blue honeysuckle, fly honeysuckle, and blue-berried honeysuckle, it is a non-climbing perennial with unique cylindrical berries. The name "haskap" comes from the word for the plant in the language of the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido island, Japan. The plants can survive temperatures down to at least −53 °F (−47 °C). Even its flowers are frost tolerant.
Long harvested from the wild by Indigenous peoples, particularly in eastern Russia, and northern Japan and China, cultivation began in the 1950s in the Soviet Union and the 1970s in Hokkaido. More recently, breeders in the US, Canada, and Scotland have reportedly begun working with the plant. Among the advantages of haskap as a crop, beyond its extreme cold hardiness, are its earliness (two weeks before strawberries), high yield (one mature plant can produce 7 or even 10 or 12 pounds of fruit), fast maturation (producing fruit by year two or three), and low pest and disease pressure (only powdery mildew is an issue, and it tends to develop well after fruit maturity). One plant can also maintain high productivity for upwards of 30 years.
But, of course, it's the taste and culinary applications that really matter. Thankfully, haskap berries are also delicious. Falling somewhere between a sweet blueberry and a sour cherry, the flavor is outstanding. It makes supremely good jams and jellies, but also tastes great eaten out of hand. The seeds are very small and inoffensive, so the fruit is also lovely in pies, pastries, ice cream, yogurt, and sauces, with little to no processing necessary. Haskap wine tastes somewhere between red grape and cherry wine.
We can't wait for haskaps to become widely available here in the US — and we're optimistic that offering these seeds will help make that dream a reality!
Our China-grown seed was imported by the good folks at Sheffield's Seeds in Locke, NY.
GROWING TIPS: Soak seeds for 24 hours, then cold stratify for 60 days. Sow seed 1/4 inch deep. Keep moist. Can survive a range of soil acidity from 3.9-7.7 pH. Requires high organic matter, well-drained soil, and lots of sunlight for optimal productivity, though the plants can tolerate some shade. More tolerant of very wet conditions than most fruit species.
NOTE: The close-up photo of two berries is from user Selso and is used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license. The photo of multiple berries on a bush comes from user Loopy30 and is used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Others are in the public domain.
