What The Heck Is A Haskap Berry?

That's what I said when Papa Pea announced a month ago that he wanted to order a couple of haskap berry plants this spring. Of course, he came with this proposal armed with propaganda extolling the virtues of this relatively "new" berry.

Seems they have been grown successfully in Canada for some time. The small blue fruit tastes like a cross between a blueberry and raspberry and has twice as many antioxidants as blueberries. (Who doesn't need more antioxidants these days?) The haskaps are sometimes known as honeyberries and grow wild in some areas of Canada, North America and in Japan and Russia. Wine made from haskap berries supposedly has a similar flavor to red grape wine. Such grapes can be difficult to grow in northern climates like ours so the fruit for future wine making would be a definite plus if we could cultivate them here.

Haskaps typically ripen in late June in Canada, a couple of weeks before strawberries. (For us, that would be much earlier than blueberries or raspberries.) Like blueberry bushes, they don't yield much until 3 or 4 years after being planted. Supposedly they bear fruit into August and even into September in cool summers which we often have in our locale.

If you're interested in more info on the haskap berry, you could check out a couple of sites. One is The Haskap Canada Association (www.haskap.ca) or www.honeyberryusa.com.

Well, our cute little haskap bushes-to-be arrived in the mail yesterday. Only problem? We don't really have an area ready for planting them. (None of you can relate to this happening, right?)

We've been wanting to expand our blueberry patch to hold more blueberry bushes. So it seemed like that area would be a good place for our three experimental haskap bushes.

That's why this afternoon Papa Pea dragged me kicking and screaming out of my quilt room so we could plot out the expanded berry patch area. The plan was for Papa Pea to go ahead and dig the holes where we would plant the haskaps even though they will be in the middle of sod that will have to tilled up later this spring as soon as the ground is dry enough.

You can maybe just make out the orange baling twine running across the bottom part of Papa Pea's leg in the above picture. That's how far past (toward me and the camera) where he is digging the holes the sod will have to be tilled up.

This is taken from the other end of the blueberry patch showing the long side that will also have to be tilled.

We try to follow the biodynamic method of planting (going by the moon signs) so when Papa Pea had the holes ready and came in for the haskap plants, it occurred to him to check if it was the right moon sign to plant fruit. Ooops. Last Monday would have been a good day. But not today. Not until after 1 p.m. this coming Monday afternoon or until most of the day on Tuesday.

So he decided to call it quits for today. (On this particular project anyway.) The holes are totally prepared and the plants . . .

. . . will be perfectly fine on our enclosed back porch until next Monday. Now if Mother Nature will just cooperate and not send us a raging blizzard on Monday and Tuesday of next week . . .

P.S. Hop on over to my quilting blog to see who won the three quilting patterns and what (little) I've accomplished in my quilt room today.