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Can anyone recommend blueberry varieties for flavor, and also which ones to avoid. I don't like the bland mushy ones that seem to be standard in supermarkets.

Also how do I clone blueberry bushes?

John Spence
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  • Best flavor: Wild, from Arrowhead district of Minnesota. Never met its like in a commercial cultivar. – Wayfaring Stranger Aug 07 '16 at 13:57
  • @WayfaringStranger That sounds good, but I don't know if I can but uncultivated blueberry plants here in the UK. I will have a look through. – John Spence Aug 07 '16 at 15:02
  • By the way, I've read that they will grow from cuttings but it's not easy – Chris H Aug 09 '16 at 10:20
  • What is the cultivar that you are growing? This is kind of subjective and I think what might be more important is their environment, fertilizing products, methods and watering. What kind of soil do you have? Do you prune annually? Anything that you've added? How big do you want your blueberry shrubs to grow? 3'...6'??? How much sun, shade? I've not run into a cultivar that was mushy and unpalatable of course I've not tried them all. – stormy Aug 10 '16 at 00:42

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I'm in the UK as well. I have three blueberries in pots, one of each of Earliblue, Duke, and Dixie. All have more flavour than supermarket blueberries, though of the three, Earliblue aren't the best. By having three varieties overlapping in time I get a good long season as well as being assured pollination partners (not strictly required but apparently helps).

I suspect that the ones you buy are often picked underripe. If I pick some underripe berries and ripen them indoors they're always disappointing. But if you wait too long the birds can get there first.

Chris H
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Look for a "lowbush" cultivar if you don't have wild ones directly available. Most in the trade are "highbush."

My unscientific opinion has long been that there's only so much flavor per blueberry, regardless of the size of the berry, so the small ones ("wild" per marketing, and sometimes wild in real life) are better.

Absolute full sun is also best - the wild wild ones tend to be in wide barrens where no trees grow (or trees are eliminated with human help, for commercial barrens and somewhat less wild bushes), or on top of mountains beyond where trees grow.

Cloning is typically done with a mist propagation system - in the industry, quite large ones, with controllers that have a mesh exposed to the mist which is used to trigger the system on/off by how much it weighs (heavier with water on the mesh, lighter when dry) so that it's sensitive to humidity and wind.

Ecnerwal
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