By Alex Kaiser and Angela Hoy
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This week’s work party started off fine but rapidly deteriorated until we were sitting huddled under the tent in a hailstorm! We took advantage of the time to start some seeds for the greenhouse.
We started some trays of various cold crops like leeks, peas, red orach and various other greens. These crops should all germinate fairly quickly in the greenhouse, and we should be able to plant them late this month or early May after we add compost and prepare our beds.
Rat proofing the compost bins took place this morning. We filled in the gaps at the bottom of the bins with a sturdy metal strip at the rear. We then backfilled with rubble, gravel and soil.
On April 5, Alex showed us the new honeyberry plant — also called haskap — he had obtained to provide our two mature bushes with a compatible pollinator, and he gave us tips on how to hand pollinate, as there are very few pollinating insects out yet.
Haskap berries are a fairly new and interesting crop for home gardens. Developed from wild berry varieties found in Canada, Russia and Japan, there are many new cultivars available that yield large, sweet and tart fruits, similar to long lumpy blueberries. Interestingly, they are not remotely related to blueberries but belong to the Lonicera or honeysuckle genus which is why they are often branded as honeyberries.
They are extremely cold hardy and even grow near the Arctic Circle! In fact, their distribution is circumpolar meaning they are found near the Arctic across North America, Europe and Asia. A great alternative to blueberries in harsher northern climates!
The one catch with these new cultivars is that they need more than one variety planted together to pollinate each other and set fruit. This is similar to apple trees, which need other trees around that flower at roughly the same time to produce apples.
Any two varieties won’t do — you need ones that are compatible due to their complex genetics and varying flowering times. Our two large bushes are a cultivar called Borealis, so by looking up compatibility charts that are available online we were able to find out the best variety to plant with them is Aurora. Even the names are compatible!
Luckily Alex found an Aurora haskap plant for sale that happened to be in bloom, so we were able to use the flowers to hand pollinate our two large bushes, and we can keep an eye on them to see if berries begin to form in the next few weeks.
Hand pollinating the Borealis flowers with one of the Aurora flowers. Notice the longer pistils hanging from the flowers which are what we are trying to get the pollen on.
We harvested a few more leeks and trimmed the thyme and sage bushes in the herb gardens for gardeners to take home, as well as removing some of the self-layered herb plants to be potted up and planted or passed on. Weeding continued!
