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Post by daylilydude on Dec 23, 2010 5:27:04 GMT -5
Anyone here grow these? How hard is it, as I am a simple man!
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Post by coppice on Dec 23, 2010 7:29:01 GMT -5
DLD please bear with a bunch of directional stuph. IE up/down, high/low.
Low bush cranberry might just as well be called a "heath" it and upland blueberry need pretty acidic soil. And soil with a higher percentage of organic material in it. Cranberry, upland blueberry, bear berry are short. Like 18" is the wilt chamberlin of these low growing plants. They like regular watering but the flooded feild of Ocean spray commercials is only to facilitate mechanical harvesting. Raised beds are preffered for home growing.
If hunkering down on your knees is off your menu, this is not the plant for you. You are probably going to acidify your soil. If applying sulphur or mir-acid hurts your gardening style, this whole group of "heaths" is not for you.
All that said I think they are along with some hucklberries pretty cool plants and adapt well to tray-culture (bonsai). All are IMO worth the trouble to pick and eat.
Now, for the tall side. Highbush cranberry is reported as edible. I've picked them and cooked them from "improved" selections sold by nursery men. I've picked them and cooked them from the wild. The next time I pick them (and cook them) will have to be the first time they 'might' become edible. This viburnum probably has kept a starving man alive, but only because it was his only choice of food. *Sucks* is not too strong a word to describe its taste.
Lowland blueberry OTOH also needs soil acidification and lots of peat or low N soil amendments, but IS one viburnum humans will happily eat. Yah, yah, I said lowland, however this taller bush grows on lower and or boggy sites in the wild--hence its name. There are better cultivars and less better cultivars, but even the worst will get a bear to push you out of the patch so he can eat em all.
There are plenty of nurserymen who sell cranberry low or high. Lots that sell blueberries. I've only found bearberry from OIKOS tree crops.
Without digging out my Mike Dirr on "Woody plants", I'm gonna speculate that all viburnums are self-fertile, but probaly do better with others around it for pollinization. I'd plant more than one of any of these. I'm also not sure low-bush cranberry, bear berry, ARE viburnums plant two or more of each...
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