A possible addition to our edible landscape

Brian and I have finally decided that this is the year the forsythia bushes on the north side of our yard absolutely have to go. They've just become too big and too unmanageable, and we have to trim them constantly to keep them from entangling our clothesline.

However, since the bushes are sitting on top of a rather unstable slope, we can't simply take them down and be done with it. Removing them without replacing them would leave nothing to hold the dirt in place, creating a real danger that the slope would simply erode away and collapse, taking our fence with it. Plus, Brian would like to have some sort of barrier there between us and the neighbors' yard, which is not exactly scenic.

This is the main problem that's kept us from replacing the forsythias up until now: deciding what to replace them with. Since we've been slowly converting more and more of our yard to edible landscaping, the ideal replacement for the forsythias would be some kind of fruit bush. We'd love to be able to grow some blueberries there, but sadly, blueberries absolutely require acidic soil, and our heavy clay soil is just on the alkaline side of pH neutral. Possibly we could make that part of the yard acidic enough if we mulched the dickens out of it with oak leaves or pine straw, but it would take a lot of work on an ongoing basis, and probably some expense as well. It just wouldn't fit in with our goal of a sustainable, low-maintenance edible landscape.

We considered other fruiting plants for that area, but nothing seemed quite appropriate. Any sort of actual tree would be too tall, and there aren't too many other crops that grow on bushes. We could have put in some more bush cherries, but we already produce as many cherries as we can reasonably use for baking, and they're too sour to be good for eating fresh.

We had just about made up our minds to give up on the idea and just get some potentilla shrubs, which perform well in clay soil and would at least provide us with some flowers for our table, when my mom mentioned some climbing roses she'd seen in a catalogue that she thought we might like. So, when I went over to her house for Passover this weekend, I checked out the catalogue. I quickly dismissed the roses as too tall for the fence on the north side of our yard, but I kept paging idly through the catalogue, and I came across a listing for a type of fruit I'd never heard of before: honeyberries.

The catalogue described these as a cold-hardy shrub that "produces large crops of elongated blueberry-like fruits 1-2 years after planting." They had two varieties available, the 3-to-4-foot Indigo Gem and the 4-to-6-foot Indigo Treat, and said that by planting both (since you need two varieties for pollination), we could "enjoy fruit from May-July."

Intrigued, but a little uncertain, I did a little more research into this type of fruit. I found a website devoted entirely to this crop, Honeyberry USA, which offered some more info:

• The plant is a member of the honeysuckle family, grown throughout the northern parts of the northern hemisphere. However, it's not invasive like the notorious Japanese honeysuckle.
• The flavor of honeyberries (also known as haskaps or edible blue honeysuckle) isn't quite like blueberries. The site calls them a "mystery berry" with elements of blackberry, cherry, kiwi, and grape. However, it says they will work in most blueberry recipes. The site has recipes for honeyberry pancakes, muffins, pie, ice cream, jam, and even wine.
• They're one of the earliest fruits to ripen in the spring. The earliest-blooming varieties produce fruit before strawberries (which, around here, tend to start in May), and the latest-blooming ones just a few weeks later.
• Depending on the variety, each plant can produce between one and ten pounds of fruit per year at maturity. 
• They're disease-resistant and pest-resistant, with the exception of birds, which will eat all your berries if you don't cover them with netting.
• They can grow in sunny or shady locations and in most types of soils. They can handle any pH between 4.5 and 8.5, though they like it best in the 5-8 range. And they may actually like clay soils better than sandy soils.

In short, this sounds like pretty much a perfect plant for that soon-to-be-vacated spot in our yard. But there are a couple of questions remaining: first, how many can we fit in the space? Second, what varieties should we get? And third, where can we buy them?

The catalogue my mom gave us seems to provide simple answers to the last two questions: order a mix of Indigo Gem and Indigo Treat plants from them for $30 a pair. However, the Honeyberry USA site, which also has plants for sale, does not recommend these two varieties to pollinate each other, even though they bloom at the same time. Instead, it suggests growing either of them alongside Aurora, Berry Smart Blue, Honey Bee, or Sugar Mountain Blue. And Honeyberry Home Gardeners goes further and recommends planting at least three varieties in the same garden for maximum fruit yield. We've got 27 feet along that fence to work with, and the plants should be 5 to 6 feet apart, so we could fit five plants—two of one variety, two of a second, and one extra—just as we did with our bush cherries.

The other question is when we want to plant them. Honeyberry USA says you can plant in either the spring or the fall, but Honeyberry Home Gardeners says fall is better. So if we want to plant these shrubs this spring, we'll need to get a move on deciding what we want, ordering them, and planting them. If we wait until fall, we have more time to consider, but we'll have to wait longer before we can expect to harvest any berries.

In short, I'm going to have to do a bit more research to figure out exactly how to make this work. But it's heartening to know that we probably can plant a new crop in place of our forsythias, rather than having that spot go to waste on something purely decorative.