 happy, especially about our first talk when we talk about honey berries. And, you know, I asked my kids this morning, we're going to talk about honey berries, guys. Who knows what a honey berry is? And one of my kids says, oh, I know, I bet it's gold like honey, right? No. Another kid goes, oh, I bet it tastes like honey, right? No. So what is it? It's a mystery, but it's one of the most promising foods in North Dakota. And the person to solve this mystery for us is here tonight. She's Kathy Wieterholt, our Hardy Food Specialist at Carrington Research Station. So let's welcome Kathy. Thank you, Tom. And thanks to everyone who's here, and thanks to everyone out in the county for participating in this. Make sure, yep, my mic's on. I'm really glad to be here. Tom's always asking me to talk about something that we're doing at the fruit project. And we're doing a lot. We have 14 different kinds of fruits. So tonight, it's the sweet side of honey berries or hascaps. And we'll find out the difference in their names in just a little bit. Well, maybe I should start out by saying, what is the fruit project? Perhaps you haven't attended one of my talks before, or maybe you haven't come to the research center. And we have the Northern Hardy Fruit Evaluation Project. We started in 2006. And then some other plants were planted in 2007. And actually the hascaps and honey berries were planted in 2007. We actually had some of these Canadian varieties before anyone else in the U.S. had them. So that's kind of a coup for us. Pretty exciting. So let's see. We have about half acres of fruit. I've changed my numbers a little bit. But it's around 850, 900, I think, 850, 900 plants that we have out there. Most of our plants are honey berries and hascaps, currants, and then we have grapes. That's our greatest number. But we have a lot of different fruits out there. And if you have questions later, we can talk about those too. So what are they? Are they honey berries or are they hascaps? Well, they're really kind of the same thing. You know, if you want to use an overarching term for all of these fruits, they're edible blue honeysuckle. They are in the honeysuckle family. And they all have these little blue fruits. And, you know, so it said they're really the same name for, or different names for the same plants. But look at all these little fruits on here. These are often different varieties. They're from different crosses. You've got these long, wrinkly, or not really wrinkly, but wiggly, skinny ones. And then there's long smooth ones and these short ones. And some of these little these little fat ones, they kind of have a heart shape to them on top. And then the ones they really want would be more round shape because round berries roll when you're processing them. And these kind of flat or, you know, rectangular berries, they don't roll when you're processing them. But that doesn't matter at home. That certainly doesn't matter at home. So for a home gardener, there's a lot more choices with all these fruit shapes out there. You can get the best flavor, but perhaps not the best looking fruit or not the best processing fruit. But a lot of choices out there. So the honeyberry name was coined, I guess, what you call it by Jim Gilbert. He is the owner of One Green World Nursery in Oregon. And Jim has traveled the world, many different places across the whole world, and brought different fruits back to the U.S. And then they propagate them and try to get them to be of interest to people in the United States. And so in general, honeyberry are, they're the Russian varieties. They, the, the genus and species is Lomysera cerulia. And then there are the subspecies. There's Comchatika, edulis, and I cannot say the lower one without really looking at it yet, but another Russian name. And then Hasgap. Hasgap, the name itself is a derivation of the names that are used by the Anu people in the northern islands of Japan. And it might be something like Hasgapa or Hasgapu, something like that. They have several different names, but they all kind of turn out the same way. And I, what does it mean? It's just like little, what is it, little berry all over the bush or something? I don't know. It really, they do cover the bushes. So anyway, the ones with Japanese heritage, it's Lomysera cerulia, but the subspecies is now Enfolocalix. And they're a taller plant. The, the edulis is, is, is tall, but bushy. And then the Comchatika is kind of like a jelly bean. It's kind of a big round mound of plants. And then the Enfolocalix is more of a tall plant, more open. It's actually, I think it will be better for harvesting, for machine harvesting. And maybe better so we don't have to get down so far when we harvest them. So here on this slide kind of shows you the origins. The, the honeyberries, Hasgaps, they may have originated in Comchatika, which is this kind of this upper right hand area. Whoops, I cannot do that. I was going to use the little, I mean, you guys probably can't see this, but use the little pointer. Anyway Comchatika up there. And then the Carill Islands kind of slide down along until they hit Japan. And what they think is that birds may have been eating these berries, because I say these are the most favorite berries for the birds. It's just crazy how much they love them. But they may have brought the seeds down along these Carill Islands, and then eventually brought them to Japan. And this fruit naturally grows on this northern island. The island is called Hokkaido. And then I, I really, it says Japan's main island, but I just, I can't really remember reading about them on the main island. I do remember reading about them on Hokkaido. So, but that's where they kind of started. And then they are distributed worldwide. They call it a circumpolar distribution. Because they're in the northern areas, and just in all these countries that are kind of cold. And they have different characteristics all over the world. In Comchatika, they're, they, they're short. Like I said, they just, they're kind of just this round, they're about three feet high, about three, or about four feet wide. They're just a round, big old bunch of leaves and berries. The flavor is pretty good. It's not, not too bad. And then down in Japan on the lower right-hand side, these are more of an upright berry. They have pretty good flavor. This note, this notice from Dr. Bore is up in Canada, and he says they have more of an uneven ripening, and they're all kind of uneven, I would say. Not, they're not, it's not really too different in my experience from all the varieties. So, and the ones in Russia, the ones more in central Russia there, they are that longer, thinner fruit, and we do see that on some of our Russian plants. Flavor is variable. There can be some really decent ones, and there can be some really nasty ones. And you don't really know it until you taste them, right? They all look alike. And they're kind of showing on this map the ones in western side of Russia have more small and bitter fruit. And I have heard Dr. Bore's talk about these and saying that they actually grow bitter honey berries in Russia on purpose because what do you put with vodka, right? You put tonic water with vodka, and tonic water is bitter. So instead of spending the money on tonic water in the wilds of Russia, really, it's like every place in North Dakota, it's really small and it's really out there. Sorry, Robinson, I love you. But anyway, so they grow these really bitter berries and then just use them in their vodka. So I guess the problem solved there. So anyway, and then look over at Canada above the U.S. there. And Dr. Bore did a sabbatical for a year, and he and another researcher from Russia went out in the wilds and they kind of looked at all the flora across Canada. And they looked for wild plants so they could add genetic material to their collection. And they found them mostly in wetter areas. I think I may have some pictures. I'm not sure. They found them in wetter areas on the edge of forests. And they felt the flavor was actually pretty good. Considering that Russia has some really terrible ones, Canada had some pretty decent ones. So that's kind of a nice thought for this genetic material. And so the berry shapes are also different as you travel the world. The Canadian ones, they've been kind of smaller and kind of rounder. You can see those pictures there. Russian ones, again, longer and thinner. The Japanese ones, so you can see this heart shape. Like right in the middle there, there's like a heart-shaped one. And they all, they kind of have that shape. And then on the right-hand side, the Kamchatika ones, they're more of a, I don't know, they call it a tear drop, but they're tear drop on both ends. They're kind of more oval, kind of a smooth berry. So it's interesting how there's these different genetics. And yet they're all related. So here was Dr. Bors' sabbatical. And he went to all these places, I think. There are a couple hundred places that they stopped at. Not all had fruit. You know, after a while they kind of got an idea of where to look. They would see certain kind of trees and certain kind of shrubs and they would say, aha, this is probably a good place to look for wild half-gaps, wild honeyberries. So they brought home quite a few different seeds and they took some plant materials and cuttings and stuff. So they put quite a few in their collection. And I remember in his text, you know, he said the flavor was somewhat different. It was different than the good flavor of other breeding materials. So the good Canadian ones were good, but they were different goods than the other ones we already know about. So I have to say, you know, I tasted them up in their research orchard up there in Saskatoon. And they all taste different. You know, you can get kind of a mulberry flavor in some, a blackberry flavor in some. Maybe a blueberry, certainly raspberry or blackberry. It's amazing all the different flavors that all these different plants have. You know, you cross two parents and then you might get five different flavors out of them. So there's a lot of potential in them. So what about growing half-gaps? We all probably want to grow these. And I have to say they're very delicious. I didn't really talk about the flavor, but I should maybe step back to that last slide and think about that. What do they taste like? I think the closest fruit you would say they taste like to me is a raspberry because they are sweet and they are tart. And it's kind of a strong flavor like a raspberry is. That's how I perceive raspberry. I mean, there's definitely something there. But I consider these to be like the potato chips of the fruit world because they are sweet enough, but they're also a little bit tart. Actually, I kind of want to keep eating them so you can keep getting that little bit of sweet. It's not hard to pick off quite a few and just keep eating them. So they're pretty good. So let's see. So growing these. In the wild, it's kind of wetter areas. They're on the edges of the bogs. And then they're in high organic areas, high organic soil areas. So what does that mean for you as a grower? It actually can mean a lot of things, but they're very adaptable. They're very, very adaptable. We know that they grow in low pH soils because that may be where they're growing in the wild, but at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, I always get those two mixed up. They have pH 8 clay up there. So we have high pH 7, not quite 8 in our soil in Carrington, but it's very organic. It's a well-drained soil. So they have probably moist conditions during certain parts of the year, and we have dry conditions certain parts of the year, and they probably also have dry conditions. So there's quite a range there. So low pH, high pH, organic clay. And then moist or drier. We don't irrigate ours when they do OK. You know, we do irrigate them that first season. But after that, we just mulch, so we don't really irrigate. In the wild, they're growing in shadier areas, but they certainly will produce more fruit if they are in the sun. So they're pretty adaptable. We really like them. And I always said, prepare your site before planting. It's always best if you can check your soil, look for different nutrients that you might need to add to your soil. A lot of soils in North Dakota are low in phosphorus, so that might be something you would add before you plant them. And we don't know the nutritional needs of the plants. They just, so far, they've done just fine where they are. And so we'll find out later, I suppose. What happens when you get your plants? You know, and these are two different kinds of plants that we got. So I guess you just say, just plant them. And that is, my philosophy is, plant a plant well, and it should grow well. And if it doesn't grow well, and you know you planted it right, it just wasn't meant for your area. And I think these hascaps will, I mean, you should see them growing anywhere, really, anywhere that you plant them. Research at the University of Saskatchewan is showing that we should plant them deeper than they came, perhaps one to three inches deeper. And I could give you some results. I don't know, I need to look at them a little closer. We did a planting study where we planted two varieties, and some we planted three inches deeper, and some plants we planted one inch deeper. And then we also did some pruning, where we pruned half of those in the spring, one spring, and half we didn't. And the results are completely opposite for the varieties. One variety produced more fruit when we didn't prune it, and when we did not plant it very deeply. And the other variety produced more fruit when we planted it deeper, and we did prune it? I don't know. But at least for sure the depth, the depth is weird that they're opposite to me. So they have different branching patterns, so we just have to kind of look at that. But anyway, this picture in the slide is how you might get your plants. You might get a plant that's already growing, and it's got a really nice bunch of roots on there. Those roots in that picture are about ten inches long or so. And on the right-hand side, those are little dormant plants that I got from Canada. Those are those little four-inch pots. I think you call them two inches by two inches on top. I don't know if they're quite two inches, and they're about four inches tall. And those are dormant. They look kind of spindly, but I'll show you another slide here. Let's see. On the left-hand side of those tiny little plants, you can see in my hand, it's a very small bunch of material there. But this is two years later on the right-hand side. I mean, you can see all that new growth. And that new growth happened because after we grew them for a year, the next spring, well, actually the spring of 2010, obviously, we cut them back. We really cut them back to about two or three inches tall. And that forced a really nice flush of growth. And all that growth is going to be upright, and the next year it's going to branch out. So it is really good to prune plants after you plant them. If they're dormant, you can prune them right away. If they're not dormant, you should probably let them grow. And then the next season in the spring when they're dormant, prune them back. And that will just force a nice shape on that plant. You get a lot of branches, which will then have a lot of fruit in the future. So one thing we have noticed, these plants are leaves opposite. And I have heard other plants then say that leaves opposite plants are a little more fragile, a little more brittle than when the buds are alternate on a branch. And we do see some breakage on these. When they are young like this, and we get wind, as we obviously do here in North Dakota, I do lose some of those branches. And not in 2010, but last spring, 2014, I had some plants that were kind of important to me, and they were growing like this. And I did take one piece of twine, and there were only like 36 plants. So I took a piece of twine, and I just made a very loose loop around them so it kind of hold the branches together so that one couldn't flop over. And that really helped them. They turned woody, and then they're stiff enough, and they can take the wind that we have. So it's one hint, maybe, to do with a young plant like that. And this is another example of how they'd grown. These were the plants I got with the bigger root ball. They were already leafed out. They had grown all summer, and we planted them in the fall. Actually, some of these were planted in early October, and some of these were planted after the 15th of October in 2012. But it was a nice long fall. And we did mulch them before winter came. And this is the growth by 2015. That's this spring when I was out there. And this is what the plant looks like. We did cut those off in 2014, and this is the growth we saw this last year. And these are going to produce fruit for us this year. And I think my next one is probably pictures of fruit. It is. So this is a lot of fruit. It looks pretty nice, doesn't it? Really makes you want to eat them. And the one thing I will point out to you is on the lower left-hand side, you can see those two sets of flowers in that picture. And if you notice, those two flowers are actually connected to one part of the plant, a little pedicel. And what that means, you can see in the picture to the right, that weird little fruit, that's a misformed fruit. And what happens is you actually have two ovaries, and you can see that in the center there. Two ovaries which make two fruits, and each of those fruits is covered by a skin, but then there is a third skin that is covering the entire thing. And that's what you see in a normal berry, like in this picture above, where these larger berries are, that one single berry you see actually has two berries inside of it. And the third skin covers the whole thing. So it looks like one intact berry, but actually it's two berries together. And what that means for you is more nutrients, because most of the nutrients in a fruit or vegetable are in the skin, right? Or maybe not always, but a lot of times, a lot of those anthocyanins are in the skin. So you're actually getting more skin in these berries than you would in a typical round berry. And so more anthocyanins for you. And they're very tender. I mean, they're very, very tender, almost too tender to pick some varieties. So it's pretty neat. Our pests, right? I said, well, not really. We have these people, and that's why I said they're like the potato chips, right? You have to keep eating them. They're very, very good. We had actually already picked these plants, but I tried to leave some berries on there. And we kept the nets on until the morning of our field day. And so then people got to try them. So people aren't really pests of our berries. But then the cedar waxings on the right hand said, oh, those birds, they really, really, really love these berries. And I mean, I'm only standing, well, I'm about eight feet away from the screen, I'd say. And that's really how far I was standing away from this bird when I was taking the picture. And he would look at me sometimes, and then he would pick a berry right through the netting. So what we do is we, I use a soil probe to make a hole in the ground, a narrow hole. And then I take bamboo poles and I push the bamboo poles into that hole. And then we put a soda can on top of that to kind of give a nice, wide, soft surface to the top of the pole. And then we stretch our netting across that. So our netting is a little farther off the bushes now than it was in the beginning. We have a different netting. But that works pretty well. And you have to use staples along the ground. And the birds are very persistent in the beginning. When you first net this, if they've already been sampling your berries and you net it, they'll come in flocks and they swoop over. And then you can hear them yelling at you, cheater, cheater, cheater, cheater, cheater. They're pretty upset. And they'll land and they seem pretty confused. But after a couple of days, they actually quit. Let's see. And then some scientific information here. I record all the bloom periods of our fruit. I go out there every couple of days. And I kind of just do an estimate. And then I've applied a color to my estimate. And the lightest colors are maybe like five to 10% of the blossoms on a plant are blooming or the buds on a plant are blooming. And then the medium color would be around 50%. And then that's 75% and 100% is at the end there in the dark color. So you can see the different species. The top row is Russian. Those are Russian varieties. The middle area are Canadian varieties. And then the lower area are the Japanese varieties. Japanese are much later, really. Sometimes up to two weeks later for the start of their bloom as compared to the other ones. And then we also have the harvest period. And I don't look at an individual plant. I just look at my range. I've got five varieties of Russian ones. And I just look at when were they harvested. One was on the 15th and one was on the 21st. So that's like six days. So that's kind of what I do for harvest. But there is a difference here. Even though the Canadians and the Russians bloom at the same time, the harvest is a little different. And then the Japanese ones are usually later than the other ones. So oddly, we had them at the Canadians and the Japanese at the same time this year. But we had a terrible windstorm this year. And it probably just goofed up everything. A couple days before we were going to start harvesting, we had 50 mile an hour winds for about 36 hours. And it really ripped the net off part of the plant. And then the net kind of rode on top of the plant. And there were berries everywhere. It was quite a disaster because it was our best crop. I mean, just looking at it, you're like, oh, this is the best crop ever. And one night and one day, they're all on the ground. So that was too bad. So let's see. And this is, I believe, one of my last slides here. Our production, it hasn't been as good as we hoped it would be for some of them. For the Russian varieties, this is per plant now. For the Russian varieties, there's one called Berry Blue. It's the biggest one. And it's one you buy as a colonizer variety. And we've had, in the last five years, we've had between one pound per plant to six and a half pounds per plant. And I believe the six and a half was this last year. So they're very large. They're about this tall. And they're about this big around. And so they've produced quite a bit of fruit. And our Canadian ones are the ones that have most disappointed me. In the past three years, we've had between a half a pound of fruit and two and a half pounds per plant. And that two and a half pounds was only on one variety. So I really think we would have had a good amount this past year if we hadn't had that darn windstorm. So that's kind of bad. But, you know, and I also don't have my pollinating varieties right with them. There are little ways away, but they should not be that far away that it would affect them. So we'll see. We'll see. And then the Japanese varieties, I've gotten one to 3.2 pounds per plant in the last five years. They're not as big as those Russian varieties. They're not as big as the Canadian ones either, but they're much more upright and really nicer to handle. I think if we irrigated them more, we would see a bigger plant because my plants are about three feet tall. And then I have visited Dr. Thompson in Oregon and she's the one breeding the Japanese plants and her plants are like five feet tall or six feet tall. She is really fertilizing them and really irrigating them and all. And it's like plant heaven out there in Oregon. So the best parts about these plants are the cold-hearted. They're cold-hearted during the bloom period. They can take about 19 degrees Fahrenheit while they're in bloom and then still continue to bloom. They're very early in their production. We start harvesting around June 15th and then we finish around the 4th of July, 10th of July, it's a really late year. And some fruit sticks to the plant nicely. Some drops early. You know, it's kind of bad if there's wind and they drop early. But on the other hand, if you can get something under them and just shake them, what a nice way to harvest instead of picking each one. That's nice. We do hand harvest all of ours. We are machine harvestable in big situations. And netting, you will need netting. And I have to say, even after all these years, I am fooled by those birds. I think there's one variety I've been disappointed in this production. I think the birds have been taking the fruit before I really noticed it. And as soon as the fruit turns a little bit blue, and not even a lot of it blue, but a little bit blue, the birds take them. So they take them like the days, the minute they start to turn blue. So you never get to see that they're turning blue. And you think, oh, I don't need to net this plant yet. But the birds are way ahead of you or us or whatever. So every year, I have lost like one variety to the birds. So I feel kind of silly about that. But they're sneaky. They're sneaky. So these are, this side is my forefathers. And I believe I have at least most of those forces in the back of your handout. Let's see. We have the Canadian propagators and the U.S. propagators. But I also have on here Jeffrey's nurseries. They are a large, large, large nursery. And they supply the U.S. markets. And I know they are propagating them. And local greenhouses have had Canadian hash gaps, like this last year at my local running store, a fleet farm kind of store. There were Boyalus and Tundra hash gaps. That's kind of nice. There's a company called Buried Unlimited in Arkansas. She sells Russian feedlings. And she herself is Russian. I think her name is Lydia or Lila, something like that. But she's selling feedlings. So they're all going to be slightly different. And you may notice a touch of bitterness. Because in the Russian ones, there seems to me there's only just a touch of bitterness. Perhaps not enough to stop you from eating them. Hopefully not enough to stop you from eating them. But there's always a touch. So those are the two U.S. sources, really, are your local greenhouses, supplies to Jeffrey's, and then this Buried Unlimited. And then Honey Bear and USA, they import from Canada. And then they resell them to you out of their place in Eglam, Minnesota. So those are your choices. That's the hardest part about the hash gaps with Honey Bear. It's getting them. We do not have propagators for the Canadian varieties here in the U.S. So there's always that cross-border stuff going on and extra charges and stuff. And with that, I'm pretty good anytime. Congratulations. All right. Thank you very much. Any questions from the counties or right here? I've got some questions for you, Kathy. You know, all the questions are coming through the moderator. I am the filter, the all-powerful filter. First question is, do you think Spotted Wing Drosophila will affect Honey Berries? Spotted Wing Drosophila affects them. I think the answer to that is mostly no, because the Spotted Wing Drosophila happens every summer or winter. And the information I've read is that many, many, many of these fruit flies die over the winter and just a few survive. So they have to, like, breed and repopulate themselves every single year, or perhaps some have to blow in on the wind. But these are so early. I think the numbers of fruit flies are going to be way too low to bother our plants here. I did hear that there was a problem, perhaps, in Nova Scotia or something like that, that was much more mild than ours are. So I don't think our numbers of fruit flies can get high enough by the time these are ripe. Okay, how about... what is the life expectancy of a Honeyberry bush? Well, so far it's been, like, seven years. But I really... You know, what is the life expectancy of any perennial plant, perennial shrub? I think it's probably got to be at least 15 years, maybe 20. I really don't know, and I don't think anyone else really has a... Getting a decent harvest from them after how many years. You should see fruit. You'll see a tiny bit in the second year, and you'll start seeing a nice crop in the third year, and certainly you'll have good harvest in the fourth and fifth year of your plants. How do the deer feel about Honeyberries? I think the deer like anything they can look at, but I do think they like the Honeyberries. The leaves are actually fuzzy, and deer sometimes don't like fuzzy leaves, but, you know, any new growth that certainly pays you to a deer. So, sorry. Try some fishing line around them. Try some fishing lines. That might help. Okay, and now you talked about birds. Birds being a problem. So, when do you put the nets on? You know, it's about... Let me see. When they start blooming until harvest is really about a month and a half. You know what? I would say one to two weeks after they are kind of done blossoming, I would just put the net on, you know. I mean, like I said, I've waited until I see blueberries, but I never saw blueberries, because they've got taken every single day. So, I would say wait until they're done blooming and then just start thinking about getting the net out there. Okay, Kathy, there's a lot of questions about just some general production practices. Like, is there a production guide to Saskatchewan have one maybe or anything to help us get started? You know, there is no production guide that I have seen yet. The best information you can find is probably from the University of Saskatchewan and from Saskatoon. And I believe their website is fruit. What is it? Fruit.fask.ca, something like that. But look up the University of Saskatchewan fruit program. And then they've got a whole bunch of information, years and years of text that they've written. But for the most part, plant them about three to four feet apart, closer for mechanical harvesting, farther for hand harvesting. And then if you just plant them a little deeper than they came, they'll do okay. Are these fruits, are they self pollinated or are the insect pollinated? Or when pollinated are insect pollinated? The pollination is insect pollination. And we're really counting on early season bumblebees and flies and things that come out very early. Sometimes these can be flowering when there's snow on the ground. So that may be part of the reason we get kind of a poor harvest, but they're native to northern areas. But it's definitely they are insect pollinated. And you do need two pollinizers. Pollinator is the insect. Pollinizer are the plants themselves. And they're kind of used interchangeably. But like apples, you need two unrelated varieties to get fruit. So when you buy your plant, they should be selling you the proper pollinizing variety to go with that. Just that one is extremely desirable and the other one's at least okay. Tell me I'm wrong. The most common, the most popular variety for a home gardener would be Tundra or Borealis, maybe Borealis. The one that they recommend for home owners because the skin is more tender so it's not suited to mechanical harvesting. Usually the pollinator is the most popular pollinator. Is that Berry Blue? Berry Blue, yes. And there is another one that you can try. It's like that Honeyberry USA. They sell one called Aurora. And Aurora is recommended by the University of Saskatchewan. But Berry Blue is a very nice one, too. But it's bigger than the other varieties. So you have to account for that. What's the maximum distance you can plant those two different varieties? You know, when I plant, I have about 30 feet at the closest and then maybe 40 to maybe 50 feet. That's between the two pollinizing varieties. And I'm seeing good production on the Russian ones but not so good production on the Canadian ones. But I don't know if it's because of the distance or not. Closer would be better if you could just get them in rows about eight feet apart from each other, you know. If they're within eight feet or 10 feet, then they should be fine that way. The bees do move. You have to. Like if Borealis is your variety, you could plant like four Borealis and then only one Berry Blue and get away with it, right? Yes. Yes. Is it in a large container or a raised bed? Well, I've never thought about that. You know, it probably would be okay in a raised bed. You know, other things are not because it gets too cold. But these are zoned too hardy. Minus 40 Celsius and Fahrenheit is a normal winter temperature in Saskatchewan where these are. And I know they don't mulch their plants. I think, you know, you might try them in a raised bed. I would definitely still mulch if you could, but maybe you don't have to do like a big hey-bale thing around them. I'm not sure about the container, you know, but you may as well try it. Yeah. How about can I make a good hedge out of it? Well, you know, I think they would make good hedges because they are thick and wooly. And in every spring I prune them for a little openness, but by the next year, woo, they've got all these nice little branches. I do not share them, but I just prune out some of them. And they're very hedgy. It depends how thick you want your hedge or how tall you want it. The ones Blue Moon and Blue Velvet, they're kind of short, about three feet tall, but about four feet wide. They are really thick. They are really, they're really sticky. I got lots of them. We've got some wine drinkers in the group. Can they use, can you make Honeyberry wine? You can make fabulous wine from Honeyberries and Hasgaps. It's one of the best things I've ever tasted or smelled. The taste, I have to say, the taste is almost more neutral, but the smell, it is just, when you smell it fermenting, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, it is the best thing you've ever smelled. It's really good. Go for it. Okay. Since they turned blue earlier, how do you tell when a Honeyberry is ripe? Ah, yeah. Wait two weeks. It's about ten days. After they turn blue, it's really about at least ten days to fourteen days is when you kind of want to wait. You know what? Just taste them. That's what I do. I just keep tasting them. And we do have a bricks meter so we can check the sugar level, but it really comes down to how do they taste. They're quite tart in the beginning and they should sweeten up and should become just more pleasant after a few days. You know, like ten days to fourteen days. You know, is early spring the best time to plant them? You know, some of the propagators say that fall is the best time to plant them. But if you can get a dormant plant and just plant it, you know, they're so hardy. They are very, very hardy. We've planted, well, we planted leafed out ones in the fall. They did fine. We planted dormant ones in the spring. They did fine. And I've actually planted leafed out ones in the spring, like in June. I may have been okay, too. So I think as a homeowner, I think any time is okay. As long as you keep them moist, put some mulch on them to prevent that temperature fluctuation and moisture fluctuation, I think they'll be okay. And when we plant them in the soil, will the characteristics of the soil affect the flavor? I do not know. How about when I bite into a honeyberry, am I going to feel the seed? You're not. They're very small and slippery. You really can't even tell they have seeds, but they're there. They're kind of like small flax seeds, but they have like a gelatinous coating on them. And you're not even, I've never noticed a honeyberry seed. How about like a, just a good perspective as the overall size of my honeyberry hedge. What's it going to look like? How tall is it going to get? Well, the Russian Berry Blue one is about up to my head when I'm five foot six. So it's about five feet tall after seven years. And it's about four feet wide. And that may be because I've pruned them a bit. But say four feet wide and five feet tall. But the Canadian ones and some of these smaller Russian ones about three feet high, maybe three and a half feet high and about four feet wide. So a big, a kind of a low gum drop. It's a big round plant. How about let's talk buds. You got besides that we don't, we're not going to worry about spotted winged or soft ones so much because they're early riping. But do you have other insect problems that go after like aphids maybe? We have not. And somebody came to see me and they talked about honeysuckle aphids and that there can be a real problem with honeysuckle aphids. And I said, oh, I didn't even know that. So I don't grow any other honeysuckle varieties. And he said that if I didn't have them already, they probably are not bothered by those aphids because other people already, I mean, if you grow honeysuckle in the area, you have a different kind of honeysuckle then you will have them. So we've seen something and I need to send samples in this spring. I think it may be like little leaf hoppers or something, something small is sucking on the very new growth and it kind of pearls it a little bit. These were on the New Oregon ones we planted in 2012. I saw a lot of that this year but the other plants did not have that. So, I mean, the older plants didn't have it. So it may be more of a factor on the young, really soft tissue. So that's the only common theme so far. This Oregon bugs are dead now from our winter. Those sissy bugs. Why don't these are probably Oregon bugs? Just the Oregon plants are susceptible to it. Here's another problem with honeysuckles is powdery mildew. You got that on your, I mean, very half caps. You know, some of the researchers do mention powdery mildew but we have not seen it. And towards the end of summer, and Dr. Bors talks about this in Saskatchewan, the leaves do get kind of blackish or brownish on some of the plants but we don't know. You know, they start so early and then their fruiting is done by June, July. The plant is really done growing by then. It's done with this life cycle, basically, except for making buds for the next year. And we don't know if that black color on the leaves is from just sunburn and senescence or it is like a powdery mildew. I've never seen white powder. Just that blackish color and the leaves don't fall off the plant or anything. They just look a little funky sometimes. How many honey buried plants would you recommend to a family of four? I don't know. We pick them all into a big box and freeze them all. I don't know. Well, I think you need at least five. One for everybody. One for everybody. Yeah. One for the dog. One for the bird, too. Yeah. One for the bird and one for the dog. Just to be clear, there's a question about can other fruits pollinate it like a raspberry? No. No. That's going to be the same species. Same species. They can get other honeysuckles, I don't think. They don't bloom at the same time. These are very, very early. And, okay, I think we have been informed. I always wondered about how these came up with blue raspberry flavor, you know, like blue raspberry popsicles.