Photograph from U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 BLUEBERRY PLANTS, SHOWING THE BENEFICIAL EFFECT OF ACID SOIL AND THE 

 INJURIOUS EFFECT OF RICH GARDEN SOIL 



The three large blueberry plants, one year old, were grown in a greenhouse in a peat soil. 

 All three are over twenty-four inches high. Standing on the middle pot is a small glass pot 

 containing a seedling of the same age and origin as the others, but potted in a rich garden 

 soil. The difference in results shows the fundamental importance of a peaty acid soil for 

 blueberry culture. 



greenhouse blueberry 01 191 1 with that 

 of 191 6, for the greenhouse and labo- 

 ratory experiments have been the con- 

 stant guide of the field plantation (see 

 pages 538 and 539). 



While the largest individual berries 

 have been grown in the greenhouses at 

 Washington, the finest clusters and the 

 best formed and most productive bushes 

 have been reared outdoors in the New 

 Jersey plantation. Furthermore, the field 

 plants have reached the stage of com- 

 mercial bearing at a much earlier age 

 than was expected from observations on 

 the greenhouse plants. 



In the article published in 191 1 the 

 conservative view was advanced that 

 blueberry seedlings or cuttings would 

 come into profitable bearing. under proper 

 culture, in five to ten years. In the New 

 Jersey plantation hybrid seedlings have 

 borne their first commercial crop when 

 only three years old and a crop three 

 times as large when four years old. 



THE BLUEBERRY BUSH LIVES A MAX'S 

 LIFETIME 



Under such favorable conditions as 

 exist in the pine barrens, therefore, blue- 

 berry culture is to be classed, as to the 



age of first bearing, not with the slow- 

 fruiting apple orchard, but with the 

 quick-fruiting peach, with this important 

 difference, however, that while the peach 

 tree remains in vigorous fruiting condi- 

 tion for comparatively few years, the 

 blueberry bush, with suitable pruning, 

 bids fair to last a man's lifetime and even 

 longer. 



There was once pointed out to me by 

 a man of sixty a handsome, vigorous 

 blueberry bush which he had known from 

 his boyhood and which he said seemed to 

 him just as large and vigorous then as 

 now, and just as highly distinguished 

 among all the blueberries of the region, 

 for it was an* albino bush and bore de- 

 licious white blueberries for the boys at 

 the swimming-hole in his childhood just 

 as it does today. 



Still further prospects of longevity 

 does the wild blueberry possess. The 

 tall decrepit veteran with densely inter- 

 woven and half-dead twigs and feebly 

 moving sap in its old and rheumatic limbs 

 has a means of rejuvenation which nature 

 has not granted to the trees of the old 

 apple orchard. If such an old blueberry 

 bush is burned to the stump, there springs 

 from its ashes a new bush, characterized 



536 



