Gadenin日本語Get the appThe color lies, and it lies by about two weeks
Haskap develops its blue skin early. The berry sizes up, the green goes, and within a few days it is a solid dusty blue that looks exactly like ripe fruit. Inside, the flesh at that stage is still green or pale, sharply acid and unpleasantly astringent. Full flavor, sugar and the soft juicy texture the fruit is grown for arrive roughly 10 to 14 days after the skin finishes coloring.
This is the reason most people who try haskap for the first time conclude it is a sour berry not worth the space. They picked on the day it looked ready. A haskap taken at the right moment is sweet with a blueberry and raspberry character and a little tartness behind it, not the mouth-puckering thing that comes off the bush a fortnight earlier.
So the ripeness test is not visual from the outside. It is internal, and it takes five seconds: pick a berry, cut or tear it in half, and look at the flesh.
| Stage | Outside | Inside when cut | Taste | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coloring | Blue with green patches | Green throughout | Harsh, astringent | Wait, net the bush |
| Fully blue, not ripe | Even blue with bloom | Green or pale with a purple rim | Sour, thin | Wait a further 10 to 14 days |
| Ripe | Blue, dull bloom, slightly soft | Purple right through, seeds dark | Sweet with tartness behind | Pick now |
| Over-ripe | Dull, dents under finger | Purple, flesh watery | Flat, ferments quickly | Pick immediately, use same day |
How to test, and how to pick
From the day the fruit finishes turning blue, sample every three or four days. Take two or three berries from different parts of the bush rather than one, because the outside of the bush and the sunny side ripen first. Cut each one open. Green flesh means wait. A purple rim with a green center means close, but not yet. Purple all the way through, with dark seeds, means the crop is ready.
Ripe haskap detaches easily. A gentle roll of the berry between finger and thumb should release it without pulling the stalk or tearing the skin; if you have to tug, it is not ripe. On an established bush the quickest method is to spread a sheet or tarp under the branches and shake or tap the stems firmly, catching whatever is genuinely ripe. Unripe fruit stays on. It is a fast way to pick a bush and it self-selects for ripeness.
The berries are soft and thin-skinned, so collect into shallow trays, not deep buckets, and expect fruit at the bottom of a full pail to crush. Pick in the cool of the morning if you can, and get the crop into the fridge quickly.
- Start testing when the last green disappears Mark the day the bush finishes turning blue. That is the start of the clock, not the finish line. Test a couple of berries every three days from then and expect the real harvest date about two weeks later.
- Net before you test, not after Birds find haskap at exactly the stage it looks blue, which is well before you want to pick. The net has to be on the bush from the first color change, otherwise the two weeks you spend waiting for full ripeness are two weeks of feeding the local blackbirds.
- Cut the berry, do not just taste it Tasting alone misleads, because sun-warmed skin reads sweeter than the flesh actually is. Cut the berry in half and look. Purple through the whole cross-section including around the seeds is the reliable signal.
- Pick over the bush two or three times Fruit does not ripen all at once and the window from ready to over-ripe is only about a week. Two or three passes several days apart takes the crop at its best and avoids the drop that follows if you wait for the last berries.
First fruit of the year, and what that means
Haskap ripens ahead of strawberries, which in most gardens makes it the first fruit of the season, three to four weeks before anything else is ready. That earliness is the main reason to grow it, and it also explains why bird damage is so severe: at that point in the year there is nothing else for them to eat.
A mature bush of five or six years yields somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 pounds (2 to 4.5 kg), picked over about a fortnight. Younger bushes give a token crop from the second year and something usable from the third.
Ripe fruit is fragile. It holds about a week in the fridge in a shallow covered tray, and no longer. Anything you are not eating fresh should go straight into the freezer, where haskap performs unusually well because the berries freeze loose and keep their flavor. Freeze in a single layer on a tray first, then bag. The fruit also cooks down into jam, syrup and sauce without any need for added acid.
Record the date the fruit finishes turning blue and the date you actually picked it, along with the weight. The gap between those two dates is remarkably consistent for a given bush in a given garden, so after one season you can look at blue fruit and know almost to the day when to start picking, which is worth more than any general rule.