Looking back now, I can see how the pieces came together, resulting in three kinds of blueberry plants in my border. Plus a lingonberry. I probably would have come home with a fig tree, but luckily the nursery had no dwarf varieties in stock during my fruit-plant-buying bender.
Blueberry ‘Chippewa’
Flashback:
July 2009:
- My family and I are berry-picking in the sun at the foot of Little Si. I am instantly smitten with the kaleidoscope of pinks, blues and purples on the blueberries. We bring home 13 pounds.
Winter 2009-2010:
- Garden reading reveals several recommendations for native evergreen berry bushes for all-season interest, encouraging wildlife, and perking up pancakes.
May 2010:
- Interview landscape designer Peter Lavagnino about ornamental edibles; he is convincingly infatuated with lingonberries.
- Read Val Easton’s description of the new “Pink Lemonade” blueberry in the Seattle Times magazine. It sounds so crazy, but wow- if it were true? A pink blueberry that tastes sweeter than the blue ones? Oh Mama!
- Pouring Cheerios, note we are down to last handful of handpicked blueberries in freezer.
- See some “Pink Lemonades” in person decorating Bagley Elementary School ’s wine-tasting fundraiser. Not in fruit, but the foliage is already tinted with mulberry and rose. Casually ask about source. Call source to check availability; answer: “thousands.”
Even the font screams "I'm so trendy I'm over already!"
June 2010:
- Have low-protein, high sugar breakfast. Receive e-mail: Blueberry “Pink Lemonade” 25% off at source (Swansons). Almost no rubber left on car tires.
- Buy:
One “Pink Lemonade” (the nursery people didn’t even know when it would bear fruit, since it’s new and untested and I still bought it – that’s love folks!)
One “Chippewa” compact-growing, heavy yielding variety that may or may not be self-pollinating, depending whom you believe.
One “Sunshine Blue” A self-pollinating, compact, rounded shrub with blue-tinted leaves and a long fruiting season, “Great Plant Picks” [http://www.greatplantpicks.org/display?id=2904&searchterm=all] calls it a “star” for the home garden.
One Vaccinium vitis-idaea (lingonberry) ‘Koralle’- evergreen, shade-tolerant, tart-ready berries.
Lingonberry fronting “Pink Lemonade” with Star of Persia’ Allium in back
- No room for everyone in new border section, so relegate ‘Sunshine Blue’ to a container. It’s good company for the chili pepper we couldn’t cram into the border last month.
Digression: Pest Watch
Are night marauders eating your veggies before you can?
This is our pepper plant riddled with little oval chomps.
The culprits, a Sky Nursery worker told us, are BABY slugs. I’m sorry to hate a “baby” anything, but half of our veggies are skeletons of their former selves. They seem to like the peppers and cukes best, tomatoes and then peas last. Out came the organic slug bait, sprinkled now like Parmesan on a pizza all over the bed. There is not one avenue left open to these voracious minimonsters. The other remedy is to go out at nightfall and remove them by hand. Somehow that hasn’t happened yet. I’m trying to convince my six-year-old to do it.
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Read more about gardening in Green Lake.
Read more My Green Lake articles written by Erica Browne Grivas, freelance journalist for hire.
