North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

The main debate on blueberry flavor is usually between the wild lowbush blueberries and the domesticated highbush (not that highbush don't exist in the wild).  I really think the variations in flavor should not be the primary motivation in highbush cultivar selection, for most, the differences aren't that pronounced.

 

Consider yeald and time of harvest (early, mid and late season) and perhaps the size of the berry.  Personally I like the largest ones because it takes less time to pick more and those huge berries sure impress the neighbors.  I don't think size leads to blandness incidentally and neither do my neighbors.  Believe me, once the plants are well established harvesting is time consuming.

 

In my zone 6, I recommend Duke and Patriot for early, Berkely and Bluecrop for mid and most importantly, Elliot for a great delayed crop.  Hartmanns carries these and many others including Bonus which they claim produces the worlds largest blueberries.  They are big!

 

In Neils 2nd response to my ladder advise he suggests that 3 legs can be more stable than 4, a point I won't bother trying to debate but he suggests that his tri-pod is more time effiecient because of time wasted stablizing a loose leg, and that's just plain wrong in my experience. I actually only have to shimmy a leg very rarely on ground that is extremely sloping in more than one direction.  In all the scores of orchards I manage I only have to shimmy a leg a few times a year.  Because the Little Giant system allows you to walk up one side and down the other it vastly increases range between moving the ladder so you spend a lot less time getting off the ladder and moving it.  This makes my work much more efficient.