I have a question maybe someone can answer. Yesterday when buying frozen blueberries at the grocery store I was surprised at how many of them said “Wild Blueberries”. How does that work? I am pretty sure that a major company selling hundreds of thousands of pounds of wild blue berries doesn’t have people out wandering the countryside with a pail and picking wild blue berries! It would have to be a commercial operation using mechanical harvesters, tractors, and so on- I would think. But I don’t live where wild blueberries grow…maybe they really are so prevalent in some areas that it is possible to pick vast amounts in the wild? Doubtful.
I remember @Matt_in_Maryland once saying he had found a source for wild blueberry plants. So perhaps these companies have simply propagated wild blue berry plants and cultivated them on normal farms where they are grown and picked like other commercial berry crops. But if that is the case, why grow wild ones at all. Surely there are “domesticated” blueberries that are more productive, have larger fruit, and so on than wild berries. Yet more than 1/2 the packages in my grocery said “wild”.
Last but not least, perhaps this is nothing more than a marketing ploy and is just a lie and there is nothing whatsoever wild about the “wild” blueberries. I know there is practically no false advertising law enforcement and have no doubt they could get away with putting “wild blueberries” on a bag no matter what the truth is. But the ones that say wild ARE very small, which I understand wild ones are.
Anyway, its not an important thing at all, just one of those little things that get in your mind and you wonder about, and I figure I’d have a decent chance of finding someone here with a good guess about why there are so many “wild blueberries” in the grocery freezer, whether they are really wild, how they are grown and picked, etc. Thanks!
Those are the lowbush species native to Maine and Nova Scotia: V. angustifolium. They also run the ridgeline of the Appalachian mountains from Maine south through Maryland. Small super sweet flavor. They are unparalelled for pies.
See G.M. Allen and Son of Orland/ Blue Hill, Maine. They are an excellent source of wild blueberries and products. They are a real-deal farm with gift shop. http://www.gmallenwildblueberries.com
Wyman is the big commercial “Costco-like” middle-man of wild blueberry sales. Wyman wild blueberries can be found in some grocery stores.
Fedco Trees of Maine is the only reliable source of wild Maine blueberry bushes. Their stock is excellent- good roots.
Raintree has two cultivars selected from the wild lowbushes of Nova Scotia: “Burgundy” and “Brunswick.”
Brunswick - by far - has done best for me. The other two are struggling and frequently get munched by critters. (Yes, I need to get chicken wire). I have all 3 planted in my z6b mountain orchard in a hillbilly raised bed of peat moss and pine bark mulch.
I have Chippewa low bush blueberry. Good berries, but productivity is on the lower side, being it so short and having berries on tips only. But I can imagine it growing on the large scale wild. It is very easy to propagate because it spreads by suckers.
I received my order from Rolling River nursery today. Extremely pleased with purchase. The plants were packed and shipped really good. Very alive and nice looking good size plants.
Here are Blue moon and Blue Hokkaido honeyberries. One bush have flowers.
‘Chippewa’ is a half-high blueberry cultivar developed by the University of Minnesota and introduced into commerce in 1996. Half-high cultivars have excellent winter hardiness and are good selections for growing in UDSA zones 3 and 4. Half-high cultivars are hybrid crosses between high bush (Vaccinium corymbosum) and low bush (Vaccinium angustifolium).
The Maine berries are straight up V. angustifolium.
Also planted out American persimmons which I grafted last year. Thank you @tonyOmahaz5 for the persimmon rootstocks and varieties. I planted them in the front yard. Now people in our neighborhood will be introduced to the persimmons.
Grafted a crazy amounts of peach scions to the peach-almond hybrid. My arms hurt today. I hope that it will start to produce good tasty peaches instead of green ones.
I’ve made two purchases from them so far and both were a good experience. They have a variety of rare fruits like jujubes, pawpaws, quinces, honeyberries, cornelian cherries and many nut trees. I like that they often give the real name of the variety along with its American trademarked name. Often time I can search information about it in the Russian sources by its real name. I really like how carefully they packed the plants. Both times I communicated with them by e-mail and received very good responses.
Hey Maria- it sounds like you’ve explained this tree before, but I missed it. What is the story with your half almond/half peach tree? Was it a seedling that you grew out and then decided it must have been 1/2 and 1/2? Or did you, for some reason, intentionally create a 1/2 peach/ 1/2 almond? I remember Ulises ( @itheweatherman ) crossed the two and the “fruit” looked pretty useless. (though it was a neat project for sure). However you ended up with it, did you just graft all the limbs? Why not just cut it at 2-3 and do one good cleft graft and let it become a new peach or almond tree?
Please understand that in no way am I suggesting you should have done anything different at all. I’m just very curious about the tree, how it came to be, and what you are doing with/to it. Thanks.
Rolling River is an excellent grower. They work very hard to produce some nice trees and plants. I’ve ordered several times from them and have always gotten high quality plants. They have a very nice, broad selection of pomegranates, and I have purchased several different, more difficult to find poms from them. ALl came in wonderful condition, all have survived and are doing very well. Very nice people, too.
Kevin, this is peach-almond cross Reliable, sold by Raintree. The kernels are sweet, so I hoped to grow a northern almond tree. However it is very vigorous and unproductive. It has just a few flower buds and they do not set much. Last year finally I got two kernels from this tree and decided that it makes very good rootstock. Grafting over the big trunk requires more knowledge that I have. And it takes a lot of man power and I am only a woman. also on peaches grafts on the new wood have better chances to take as I’ve read it on this forum. I have many different varieties of peaches and nectarines grafted on this tree, so it will interesting to see how it fares next year.
Thanks for that. I didn’t even know anyone sold such a thing- so that’s how much I know. Also didn’t know a peach/almond would make an eatable nut or fruit. That’s why I was interested in your post, so thanks for the info. And btw…I’ve never tried to top work a whole peach tree, but if it is any harder than just grafting limbs on peaches I couldn’t do it either! I almost never get peach grafts to take for some reason. Hope you have better luck! Thanks.
I got my 2ed order of trees today. These are from Grow Organic/Peaceful Valley. The trees were almost all really thick diameter- most about the size of a broomstick. But the roots were cut back BIG TIME! These were the most dramatically trimmed roots I’ve seen. The fact that such large diameter trees have so little roots is a bit concerning to me.
Here is a photo of all the trees and you can see the roots a bit in the first photo. The second photo shows the same trees in the same order, but with signs indicating what they are in case you wonder. The reason I made all the little signs is that I took close up photos of each tree and its roots with a sign indicating what kind of tree it is. I thought this might be useful if some of them die.
I’m pretty nervous, what do you all think? Even if they are ok, I just don’t understand the need to prune roots so hard like this. Surely they would do better/grow faster/be healthier with bigger roots. Of course these are all Dave Wilson Trees, BTW. They should know what they are doing and I assume they did this and not pleasant valley. Either way, I’d feel better with more roots!!
I have mentioned this several times about the severe butchering they do, but all trees did fine for me. I did cut the tops way back though to match the roots.
Those roots look better than some of the trees I got. They will be fine. I do soak the trees in bucket of water before I plant. The instruction in the box said a couple of hours. I have no patience and after about 1/2 - 1 hr. I am ready to plant them.
The picture of your lined-up trees with name tags reminds me of a beauty pageant Who’s the winner?
However it is very vigorous and unproductive. It has just a few flower buds and they do not set much. Last year finally I got two kernels from this tree and decided that it makes very good rootstock. Grafting over the big trunk requires more knowledge that I have. And it takes a lot of man power and I am only a woman. 
Who’s the winner?