Blueberries for Baby (and us)

We've been wanting to plant blueberries since we bought the rat-hole. And now that we have a baby, we're more motivated. We bought six bushes a month ago (they were on sale), and they've been sitting in the yard every since then. The weather was really nice last week so we took the opportunity to get them in the ground. The location isn't our first choice and the spacing is a little tight. We'll transplant them to their final location next year (or the year after that).

Here's a photo of where the blueberries are planted.
We've learned a lot about blueberries during this process. One thing we learned is that there are A LOT of varieties. How to choose?

There are highbush and half-high varieties. Highbush can grow over six feet high and wide. The half-high ones are more in the range of one to four feet high and some of those spread out. Most of the bigger and better tasting blueberries seem to be of the highbush varieties so that were we focused. Plus, we want lots of blueberries!

Another thing we learned was that there are three bloom seasons for blueberries: early, mid, and late. It's best to have at least two varieties where bloom times overlap. For example, one early to mid and one mid to late. We got two of each season: two earlies, two mids, and two lates. This way we will hopefully have blueberries all summer long!

Blueberries like lots of sun and lots of water, especially during the fruiting season. They also really like peat moss for compost.

Here are some photos of our new blueberry bushes and some descriptions.

Bluejay
Early-mid
Mild fruit


Spartan
Early
Large flavorful fruit


Hardiblue
Mid
Heavy bearing


Chandler
Mid
World's largest blueberries


Elliot
Late
Large and tangy berries


Sunshine Blue
Mid to late
Tangy sweet berries

We're looking forward to seeing how they produce next summer!