Photo: Opioła Jerzy (Poland) — CC BY 2.5 · source
Survives zone 2 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Sweet-tart, blueberry-meets-raspberry — good fresh and processed. ⚠ Worth knowing at genus level: haskap is one of the few honeysuckles that is good to eat. Many Lonicera berries are emetic or toxic, so this is not a genus to forage on a family resemblance — identify to species.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–7
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Late May–June — the earliest fruit of the year
- Mature size
- Compact shrub 1–2 m; excellent in containers
- Light
- Full sun in cool zones; PARTIAL (afternoon shade) needed in hot zones 6–8
- Soil pH
- 5.0–7.0
- Environment
- Boreal to temperate
- Native range
- Circumboreal — northern Europe and Russia across Siberia to Japan, and into northern North America; bogs, wet woodland and cool moist ground.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 3 yrs
- Growth speed
- 20–40 cm/year — medium.
- Spacing
- 150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Opposite, oblong to elliptic, 3–8 cm long, dull blue-green and slightly downy, with untoothed margins.
- Root system
- Shallow and fibrous, spreading laterally near the surface; benefits from mulch and resents drought.
- Fruit description
- Elongated, box-shaped to oblong blue berries 1–3 cm long under a heavy waxy bloom, with soft juicy flesh; sweet-tart, tasting between blueberry and raspberry, and among the very earliest fruits of the year — often ripe weeks before strawberries.
- Propagation
- Softwood cuttings in early summer or hardwood cuttings in autumn both root readily. Seed needs about 2–3 months cold stratification and gives variable plants.
- Pollination
- ⚠ SELF-INCOMPATIBLE (haskap) — needs a 2nd bloom-matched cultivar
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Not a heavy feeder — work compost or well-rotted manure into the soil at planting, then give an established plant a balanced fertilizer in early spring; avoid fertilizing in the first season and avoid over-feeding, which favors leafy growth over fruit and can burn the shallow roots.
How it spreads. Forms a dense, multi-stemmed clump that thickens slowly in place; most sources report it does not sucker or spread aggressively, so it stays put rather than colonizing surrounding ground.
Growing tips. Largely trouble-free with few serious pest or disease problems; benefits from light structural pruning after the first few years to remove old wood and sustain fruit yield. Extremely cold-hardy, tolerating winter temperatures to around -40°F without special protection.
Grow journal
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