Blueberries are wonderful plants.
Not only do they live for decades and bear delicious fruits that need almost o
care, but they also are beautiful in themselves, with white, bell like flowers
in spring and hand some oval leaves that turn orange scarlet in fall. The
berries are pretty, ripening slowly so that clusters are green red and blue all
at once. Even the bare reddish stems are eye catching in winter. It often use
blueberries in landscaping a home whether the owners want to eat the berries or
not if they don’t then certainly the birds will. The plants look good as
hedges, at the edge of a pond or even near the house as specimen shrubs.
There are several different
blueberry species. The one most commonly grown for fruit and for ornament is
highbush blueberry “Vaccinium corymbosum”. It is the hardiest of the lot and
normally grows to about 8 feet tall if unpruned but sometimes twice that. Low
bush blueberry “V. angustifolium” stays under 2 feet tall and makes a fine
ground cover. Rabbit eye blueberry “V.ashei” is a highbush species that, unlike
V. corymbosum, does not need to be thoroughly chilled in winter and will bear
well in the south. It does not thrive north of zone 7, however V. ashei is a
very tall, vigorous shrub that ripens later than northern blueberries; the
fruits are generally not as sweet but are large and good baking. In
Connecticut, both highbush and lowbush blueberries grow wild. The wild berries
are the best of all if you judge by flavor, even though they are smaller and
picking a pie, may take hours. But what better way to spend a few summer hours
on a sun baked hillside. The northeastern part of Turkey is one of the key
sources of Caucasian whortleberry (V. arctostaphylos), bilberry (V. myrtillus)
and bog blueberry, bog whortleberry or bog bilberry (V. uliginosum).
Moreover, choosing a blueberry
site by observing the plants in the wild can be misleading. The highbush ones
often grow in swamps, and while it may look as if they are growing with their
feet in the water, they are actually perched above it, with the ground they
grow in soaking up water from below. The lowbush blueberries appear to scramble
over bare, rocky mountaintops where there seems to be hardly any soil at all,
let alone water. But their long roots are actually snaking down into fissures
in the rocks, finding both the roots of both highbush and lowbush blueberries
spread vigorously underground. You should give yoru blueberries a site where
moisture is ample but doesn’t just sit around the roots. Other important
factors are full sun so they’ll ripen and good air circulation to prevent
disease.
Well to select the soil should be
loose and light, but the most important factor in growing blueberries is
acidity. Blueberries like a pH of about 4.5 and will grow in anything from 3.5
to 5.5. Hence, if you are not sure whether the soil is acid enough in your area
or in the spot where you want to grow them, have it tested. If the soil is
alkaline you may want to grow something else instead, but if you are hell-bent
on blueberries there are ways to make your soil more acid. Moreover you can add
aluminum sulfate purchased from a garden center, following in the directions on
the package or the recommendations of your soil test, but in most cases you can
lower pH simply by digging a lot of acidic organic matter into the soil; rotted
leaves, wood chips, peat moss, shredded bark, sawdust any of these will do the
trick and will also help the soil to retain the moisture that blueberries need.
To plant the blueberries, and
then buy dormant plants that are two or three years old those any older are
difficult to transplant. You can order them by mail or online to pick it. Planting
bare root is fine and gives you a chance to see whether the plants have a good
healthy, fibrous root system rather than just a few stringy roots. But be sure
to keep the roots moist up until the time they go into the ground this is extremely
crucial. Well, the ideal weather is to plant blueberries in early spring in
cool climates, late fall in mild ones, in holes 18 inches deep and equally
wide. Well enriched with organic matter. If the planting area has poor soil,
enrich it throughout. Don’t add fertilizer or manure directly to the hole,
however, though you may spread some on the soil surface. Moreover highbush
berries are best planted at least six feet apart, or even a bit farther specially
for rabbit eyes, so the whole bush can be sun ripened, but if you are making a
hedge, then three to four feet apart is acceptable. Dwarf highbush varieties
can also go this close, or they can be planted in containers. Plant low bush
berries about two feet apart. These can be dug from the wild if you have a
source, by removing large pieces of sod along with bushes. Therefore, plant
blueberries at the same depth at which they were growing previously or an inch
or so deeper, spreading the roots out in the soil, firming lightly and watering
well. Cut back the tops by half and apply thick mulch six inches is about right
of an acidic organic material such as shredded bark.
It is very imperative to keep the
plants moist the first year they are growing and any time that fruit is
forming. They should be fed fairly heavily each year at blossom time by top
dressing with acidic compost, well-rotted manure, or a commercial fertilizer
designed for acid loving plants such as azaleas. You can also use cottonseed
meal, blood meal, fish meal, ammonium sulfate, rock phosphate, bone meal or
just about anything else you like except materials such as wood ashes or lime,
that will raise the pH. But make sure don’t fertilizer excessively with
nitrogen or you may get vigorous plants with sparse fruit. You can feed again
as fruits are forming, but don’t feed past June in climates where late new
growth may be winterkilled. Don’t try to dig fertilizers into the soil since
the plants are shallow rooted; just remove the mulch, apply nutrients to the
soil surface, water well, and replace the mulch. The mulch will break down and
do its part in acidifying and lightening the soil add some more each year.
Further, blueberries, especially
highbush species, benefit from pruning to keep the plants a size you can pick
easily, to let sun into the bush to ripen fruits and to keep a good supply of
fresh new growth coming along. Berried develop on fruiting spurs produced the
previous season on side branches of old main stems. You may won’t have to start
pruning until bushes are three to four years old, but then start thinning them
once a year while they are dormant. Just when they are about to leaf out is a
good time because you can then remove any winterkilled wood. Thin out old, gray
canes with lots of little twigs that have grown beyond bearing age and have no
fruiting buds visible, cutting them at the base of the plant. Favor the newer,
redder canes, keeping 6 to 8 good bearing canes on the bush. Tall, straggly
canes can be headed back, and weak
short, twiggy growth can be removed from tips. Note, while pruning, that
fruiting buds are fatter than leaf buds; avoid removing twigs with a lot of
these.
Therefore, if you buy healthy
bushes and take good care of them, you will perhaps have very little trouble
with blueberries. There are some diseases, but most modern cultivars have been
bred for resistance. If you live an area where the berries are more disease
prone, then apply fresh mulch each year, prune out debris promptly disinfecting
your clippers between cuts and go easy on the fertilizer. If bushes succumb to
botrytis in wet weather the berries shrivel and the tips die or stunt disease
which are spread by leafhoppers and stunt the plants. Then destroy them and
start over in a new place. They might occasionally get yellows disease if
drainage is poor and the pH too high. Mummy berry, a fungus that makes the
berries shrivel and harden, is often caused by wet weather a poor air
circulation. Remove all debris, especially dead berries, hold off on
fertilizer, and turn over or replace the mulch in early spring. Hence the most
troublesome pests of blueberries you will have to deal with will be birds. You
will perhaps have to cover the bushes with plastic netting or cheesecloth extending
clear down to the ground to avoid losing much of your crop. Spreading the
netting on the light-weight metal or wooden framework with a flap you can lift
to enter the cage will make picking easier. Other pests include blueberry
maggot the larva of the blueberry fruit fly, which enters the fruit and rots it.
Clean up dropped barriers and fight the critter by catching it in the fly stage
with yellow sticky taps or by using rotenone. If blueberries stem borers get
into the stems in early summer, causing them to wilt, remove the stems and burn
them. Pick off Japanese beetles or use milky spore disease.
Though blueberries were usually
hand-picked with berry-picking rakes, but modern farmers are using machine
harvesters that shake the fruit off the bush of cultivated highbush
blueberries, while new machines are being developed for wild. If you are bringing
yourself to do it, you should rub off developing berries on young plants until
they are 3 to 4 years old, to let the bush put its energy into growth. You will
start to get abundant crops when the bushes are about 5 years old, perhaps about
6 quarts per bush. You should pick at least twice a week just rubbing your
thumb over the berry cluster and letting the ripe berries fall into your hand
or a container held under them. Picking this way is important because berries
that look blue are not always ripe. They should really sit on the bush for a
week after they are blue, until they fall off easily. The fact that the clusters
ripen a little at a time means that you can pick from a single cluster for up
to a month and enjoy the berries over a long period. If you plant early, middle
and late varieties you can harvest berries from June to September.
Most blueberry varieties do not self-pollinate
well, so it is best to plant several. Popular early varieties include “Earliblue”
the short growing “Northland” and “Collins”, which bears in long, uniformly ripening
clusters. For mild season grown “Blueray” “Bluecrop” and Berkeley all of which
bear abundant crops of large berries. For later berries grow “Jersey” the shrub
is especially handsome, the sweet dark “Herbert” and to wind up the season, “Coville”,
good varieties for the north are Northland, “Earliblue”, “Blueray”, the early
Patriot, the late bearing Elliott and “Northblue”,
which is a self-fertile dwarf variety “Tophat”
is a hardy dwarf that can be grown in tubs. For rabbit eye varieties the standard
favorite is “Tifblue”, a vigorous, upright bush that bears fairly late. For an
early one try Climax or the lower growing Wood ward. For midseason try out
compact “Southland” and for late season the sweet tasting “Delite”.
