June 22, 2011

From past experience, I know that cedar waxwings love honeyberries and haskaps dearly.  They will take the berries just as they turn from green to blue, not even waiting for sweetness to appear.  So I have had my eyes on the berries. 

The Russian variety ‘Kamchatka’ bloomed apx. May 15-23 and I saw the first color on Monday, June 13.  Two days later, wow, almost all of the berries had turned.  We netted the whole row on Thursday the 16^th.  I can’t believe we didn’t lose them to the birds.  A few ‘Berry Blue’ and ‘Blue Belle’ had turned then and they had turned quite a bit on Monday, June 20.

The Canadian haskaps, ‘Tundra’, ‘Borealis’, ‘9-15’ (now known as ‘Indigo Gem’) and ‘9-91’ (‘Indigo Treat’) started blooming about the same time as the Russians, but they bloomed a little longer; I had them recorded as 75-90% complete when the three Russians were done blooming.  We also have 2 other Russian varieties – ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Blue Velvet’ and they were really just starting to bloom as the others finished.  So we had lots of cross pollination possibilities.

The Haskaps (Canadian and Japanese) were netted on Tuesday, June 21 (Happy Summer!)  I saw colored berries last week here and there and when I inspected them on Monday afternoon, I saw bird poop on a few leaves.  But it was raining so much and I didn’t have a helper to net them then.  So yesterday, June 21, we netted them all.  The Japanese varieties from Dr. Maxine Thompson have quite a ways to go yet, but they are in the same row and the net is high to allow for growth.

We use extruded netting, 14 ft wide, and support it with bamboo poles covered in soda cans.  I use a soil probe to make the holes into the soil as I could never press the poles in by hand.  Then garden staples are used to hold the whole thing down.

Just as we finished netting yesterday, a flock of about 20 cedar waxwings came in and fluttered over the net.  They landed in the trees and were shooting us dirty looks, I am sure!  I will bet that one or two find a way into the net.