New (and found) blueberries
Now is not the time to be planting perennials, but I really wanted to fill up the winterkilled gap in our blueberry patch,
so I'll commit to watering these two little guys until they get
established. I also snipped off the flower buds so the plant on
the right would put its energy into roots, not fruits. Hopefully,
with a little TLC, they'll survive and thrive despite the late planting.
Mark and I went back on
forth about where to get our replacement blueberries. He had
noticed some good-looking plants at a local store, but it turned out
that those were rabbiteye blueberries, which I've now learned are a bit
of a gamble on our north-facing, zone-6 hillside. So I looked at online retailers instead. I was sorely tempted to go with Willis Orchards, who provided us with some awesome-looking rabbiteye blueberries
in 2009. But that southern nursery has a pretty small selection
of northern-friendly plants, so I instead ordered from Starks Brothers,
where the prices were higher and the plants a bit punier, but where the
variety selection more up my alley. In case you're curious, we
settled on Earliblue (a very early-fruiting northern highbush) and
Sweetheart (a northern-southern hybrid).
While
digging out the two dead blueberries, I was in for a surprise.
The main Brightwell plant was dead (as evidenced by how easily the roots
came out of the ground), but one stem had bent down and been hidden
under the mulch. That stem had rooted and now little leaves were
poking out, looking for light.
In a previous life, I
would have nursed that little plant along and returned it to the patch,
but in this life, I know that if the parent was winterkilled, it's not
worth wasting space on the offspring. Instead, I'll pass this
little blueberry plant along to my mother, who lives in a slightly
warmer climate and whose winters are mitigated by asphalt and
concrete. A freeze-sensitive blueberry variety should be just the
ticket in her city yard.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Ian --- I've considered ordering from them before. Can't quite recall why I haven't --- maybe price or varieties available?
Clarien --- In this case, the offspring is reproduced clonally, so it's identical to the parent. As a result, it won't show any adaptation, unfortunately.