Wild Blueberry Plants

Uses

• Wild blueberries provide many health benefits and require little care. They make a handy ground cover for the home garden or naturalized areas. Wild blueberries are a part of the diet of both wild birds and mammals, so they are an asset in wildlife gardens. Wild blueberries are also a main food of honey bees and butterflies. Beekeepers can benefit from wild blueberry stands and butterfly gardeners can enjoy fluttering visitors. Tangy wild blueberries can be eaten fresh, canned or frozen.

Establishment

• Wild blueberries establish themselves from seed. Established blueberries send out runners called rhizomes. These underground stems root as they go and send new shoots up through the soil, making large clumps. Each clump is called a clone and consists of the parent plant and all its rhizomatous shoots. You can propagate wild blueberries by digging up and transplanting whole clones with their attached sod clumps from your established stands. You can grow them from seed, rooted softwood cuttings or rooted rhizome cuttings too. Mulching with peat promotes rhizome growth and faster spreading.

Planting and Growing

• Like their cultivated cousins, wild blueberries need acidic soil. Their ideal pH is a range of 4.8 to 5.2. Adding peat to the soil before planting can help wild blueberries get established. They also like plenty of sun, so for best fruit production, plant them in full sun. Wild blueberry varieties can be purchased from specialty growers or through mail order and online nurseries. They will usually be sold for the home garden as potted plants. To buy in bulk for naturalizing or commercial planting, you can get plugs or 2-inch cells. Cells are trays of 50 rooted cuttings, plugs are 8- to 12-week-old dormant young plants raised from tissue culture medium. Plant wild blueberries in rows, as blueberry patches or in mixed plantings with other acid-loving plants.

Harvesting

• Harvest wild blueberries with special rakes that comb the berries from the plant. Since wild blueberries have less water content than cultivated types, you harvest more berries per pound. They have an intensely sweet flavor with a tang. Wild blueberries also have more of the prized antioxidant anthocyanin than cultivated highbush blueberries.