Impulse Buy!

I was at Jung’s Garden Center two weeks ago and stumbled into the bare root room. I couldn’t escape without purchasing 2 tiny little blueberry bushes. They were just too cute.

I tried growing highbush blueberries many years ago. I can’t even remember what happened to those shrubs, but I do remember that they never produced any berries. What made these ‘Dwarf Northsky’ bushes so attractive to me is that they only grow 18 to 24 inches tall so they are small enough to include in a perennial bed.

My new plants are hardy from Zones 3 to 7 and can survive temperatures to -40 degrees (let’s hope THAT doesn’t happen any time soon). As a bonus, their foliage turns red in fall. Blueberries need an acid soil to thrive so I added sulphur to the soil and fertilized them with Miracid.

The plants are so tiny that I obviously wasn’t expecting much in the way of berry production. It thought it would be fun just to be able to pop a few berries into my mouth from time to time while wandering around the garden. Surprisingly, after a little research I discovered that ‘Dwarf Northsky’ produces up to 2 lbs. of berries per tiny plant.

Now I just have to figure out how to keep the birds from stealing my berries!