Growing blueberries: 5 essential tips

Blueberries are a delightful and delicious fruit to grow in any garden. Here are a few tips on caring for blueberry plants.

Blueberries grow wild in open woodlands where the soil is quite acidic.

• Improved blueberries bear bigger, more flavourful fruits than their wild ancestors, and they are very easy to grow.
• Try a mound of two varieties in a corner of your yard where you might otherwise plant an ornamental shrub. In a few years, you'll have plenty of blueberries for eating fresh, freezing, or making delicious pies.

Blueberries must have acidic soil (pH around 5) that's well-drained and rich in organic matter.

• Mix one or two buckets full of acidic peat moss with the soil in the planting hole.
• If your soil is alkaline, dig a hole one metre deep and two metres across and fill with a mixture of one part peat moss to one part sand.
• Fertilize blueberries with cottonseed meal or a timed-release fertilizer intended for use on azaleas, which also love acidic soil.

Oak leaves and other acidic mulches — including pine needles, wood chips, or sawdust — help blueberries thrive.

• Spread three to five centimetres over the ground beneath your bushes to protect the plant's shallow roots.
• As long as you harvest all the good berries and clean up any damaged fruits or cover them with deep mulch, your blueberry bushes should bear year after year with no disease problems.

Birds love blueberries, and the only sure way to thwart them is with netting — from the top of the bush all the way down to ground level.

For superior flavour, don't pick the berries as soon as they turn blue.

• Let them hang on the branches a few more days to develop their mellow sweetness, then "tickle" the bunches; the ripe fruits will fall into your hands.

• Even though cross-pollination isn't absolutely essential for blueberries, planting more than one variety will make both bushes bear more and larger fruits than either would alone.

Another plus: Planting early-season, mid-season, and later varieties enables you to have fresh berries for weeks on end.

Blueberries vary in their tolerance of cold, so there isn't a single blueberry that's right for all climates. Don't know which varieties you most like to eat? Visit a local blueberry farm and sample different varieties.

• Northern highbush blueberries: Best for cold winter climates.
• Lowbush blueberries: Not as productive as taller types, but they make a nice knee-high groundcover for partial shade.