By Tom Kalb
NDSU Extension
It’s fun to grow new fruit crops.
Common fruits like apples and strawberries are okay, but there’s nothing special about them. It’s more exciting to grow and tasten an exotic, new fruit.
I have seen lots of promising fruits over the past 15 years in North Dakota. These include seaberry, silverberry, lingonberry, goji berry, goumi, kiwi, blackberry, mountainash, pawpaw, and the list goes on.
They all disappoint. Many of these crops can’t survive our cold winters. The other crops ripen too late or grow on branches with vicious thorns. A few of the crops grow well but taste terrible.
One new fruit crop has stood out in our gardens. It is easy to grow and tastes delicious. This fruit is the haskap, also called honeyberry.
It’s easy to grow haskaps. They can survive our worst winters. They have no major insect pests or diseases. Haskaps thrive in our prairie soils.
Millions of haskap shrubs are grown in the prairie provinces of Canada. Any crop that can survive the Canadian prairie will survive in the Dakotas.
Source : ndsu.edu