Seventeen years ago, I decided to grow blueberries. Several hundred large shrubs were obtained and successfully transplanted.
Root System
The plants were cut into six-inch stubs to send all the strength possible into the root system. The first year’s growth was excellent, with each bush recovering about half the normal size.
For the second year, it was a good cultural practice to remove all the flower buds, and if you realize how many buds there are on one blueberry, you can easily understand that it took me over two weeks to complete the disbudding.
The third season was the year of great expectancy. The shrubs had regained their original size. The blossoming was beautiful and prolific.
By midsummer, the branches were so laden with fruit that they touched the ground.
The Bird Reject Berries We Got
An interested county agent and I estimated we would have at least 500 quarts of juicy, luscious, saleable berries. But do you know how many we did get?
Less than three quarts—mostly unripened ones, bird rejects, and dried ruts. It seemed that every “flying vacuum cleaner” in Bergen County had a visa to the Runk blueberry patch.
And that included birds who normally are not considered fruit eaters during this season. Among them were the red-eyed vireos, chickadees, flycatchers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, orioles, swallows, woodpeckers, native sparrows, and others.
Red-Eyed Vireo
The red-eyed vireo occurs wherever trees grow. It nests low but belongs essentially to the forest canopy far overhead. Undoubtedly, it was once the most abundant bird in North America.
It may still enjoy this distinction even though vast areas once good red-eye habitats have been cleared and are now occupied by birds requiring more open types of country.
The red-eyed vireo is pre-eminently famous as a singer. He is incessant in his song and particularly vocal during the heat of our long summer days when few other birds sing.
Red-Eyed Vireo Nest
The nest of the red-eye is the commonest one encountered in the woods. A small cup-shaped structure about the size of one’s fist, it is always slung between two twigs of a fork and situated from 5′ to 20′ feet from the ground.
The nest is a beautifully finished piece of workmanship, constructed of fine grasses and rootlets, bits of birch bark and paper from wasps’ nests, bound together and to the supporting branches with spider’s or caterpillar’s webbing and flexible strands of grapevine bark.
The vireo’s summer food is insects, but after the breeding season, it relishes a great variety of small fruit, particularly the blueberry.
Adaptable Blueberry
There is some sort of blueberry adaptable to almost every section of the continent. The most important and widely usable one for landscape use is the highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum.
It is a deciduous shrub reaching 12 feet in height, but proper pruning can easily keep it lower in gardens. The foliage turns a bright scarlet in the autumn, sometimes even orange.
Where Blueberries Thrive
Blueberries fail in alkaline and neutral soils, such as those of ordinary vegetable gardens. Therefore, the ideal medium for them is a mixture of peat and sand, well-drained and aerated but with an ample supply of water during the growing season.
Cultural practices are similar to those of the rhododendron.
Available Blueberry Varieties
Wide varieties of blueberries are now available at the local nurseries and fruit growers. They differ chiefly in growth habits, fruit maturity dates, and diversity of twig coloring for the winter effect.
As they are long-lived plants (50 to 75 years), a little extra care in their selection is worthwhile.
44659 by Alfred E. Runk