10 June 2018 Haskap. Lonicera caerulea L.

[Durgan]

10 June 2018 Haskap. Lonicera caerulea L.
Posted on June 10, 2018 by Durgan
http://durgan.org/2018/June 2018/10 June 2018 Haskap/HTML/ 10 June 2018 Haskap. Lonicera caerulea L.
The berries were picked of my six Haskap plants. 1546 grams were obtained.The fruit is hard to pick manually, since both hands are required to locate the berries. The fruit is always sour,so I made milk shakes out of them. There is probably a pound left for the Robins. There is an effort in BC and Nova Scotia to grow Haskap commercially. The connection of the berry to the stem is very weak and they fall easily. This is my first reasonable harvest.

 

[Durgan]

To remove the debris I placed the berries in water and floated the chaff off the top. This worked well but left the the berries wet, which is no problem if the berries are to be used within a few days. For longer storage it is better to winnow the berries by dropping from a height in a breeze and get rid of the chaff that way.

The berries have a lot of merit and they have much substance compared to blueberries, but are tolerably sour. My daughter mixes them with yogurt and I use them in milk shakes.

They must be picked using a pond and sick system, which is a baby pool cut in half and placed around the bush, and the branches are them tapped with a stick lightly to make the berries drop. Otherwise the time to collect the berries is too tedious and takes too much time. This depends upon the size of the field. The berries are attached very lightly to the tree branch.

The berries must be netted or the birds strip all in a few days.