I have started several huckleberry plants from seeds and grew them in the garden. The seeds came from berries I got in the woods. Of course, everything I know came from Dr Barney's University of Idaho pdf on growing them. Except I took his 1999 document and used more modern tech. Changes included growing them for a year indoors at 18/6 in peat then planting them outside in the spring. I used blood meal and power bloom as well as coffee grounds and woody debris. Keeping it organic. Basically, if you can grow a blueberry, you can grow a huckleberry as well. They bloomed after 3 years and produced some berries. This year a late frost killed most of the blossoms, but a few survived. I'll cover it next year in the early spring. they say the huckleberry plant is slow growing, but I've got them in the sun with a drip system. So they are growing very quickly. The benchmark of survival are the plants they originated from, and they are growing way better than the wild plants. Perhaps even outpacing some of the blueberries. Never add alkaline materials. To make the bed they grow in I dug out all dirt and replaced it with peat moss. Then started the acidic mulching and acid fertilizing. You could use uh wool compost if you don't want to use peat. You can use acidifying chemical fertilizer for blueberries if you don't care about organic.
I am very impressed to read of the lengths to which you have gone to propagate huckleberry plants. (I don't know what 18/6 refers to however.) One of my very favourite plants is evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, which also has very tasty berries. I have been successful propagating it from cuttings and wonder if you have considered propagating Vaccinium parvifolium by cuttings - it does save a few years growth.
Dr Barney says to propagate them through rhizome cuttings, but his warning is you need at least 1 other plant that is different genetically for cross pollination purposes. So I sprouted them all from seed. I am definitely interested in doing a cutting.... I can see the rhizomes just under the surface, they are like fat reddish branches. I think you need like 10cm of it to make a new plant. 18/6 is the lighting schedule I used, 18 hours of light and 6 of dark. I did that for almost an entire year before I planted them. They had grown so much the rhizomes were already poking out of the sides of the net pot. I had planted them in a net pot full of peat after they outgrew the seedling starter pots. It took me from July when I extracted the seeds, until may the next year when I planted them in the ground. By then, they were producing rhizomes and ready to grow :). I didn't know they would spread on their own like some kind of strange weed lol! But the plant that had a rhizome has already grown another plant next to it. And there are several more plants sprouting out of the surface now. Oh, the seeds took 4 weeks to sprout, I had them in peat, in plant starting pots covered in plastic cling wrap until the seed pods had popped off. Yah and the seeds are like specks of dust they are so small I planted them with a sewing needle with the seed trapped in a small drop of water. Used the classic shot glass garbage float tech to get the seeds out. Just smash some berries in the bottom of a shot glass then float the garbage out with water and keep all viable seeds on the bottom. Phew! Also.... Each seedling is it's own special snowflake, none of the plants I sprouted were even close to being the same. I think they are cascade huckles. The seeds needed no special attention after being extracted, just plant them right away in peat or wool compost. Also, I can't go into the woods and point to a huckleberry seedling... they don't exist for some reason.
I think they might be either cascade huckles(Vaccinium deliciosum) or mountain huckles(Vaccinium membranaceum) because they are dark purple. Or some kind of strange hybrid, because both of them are growing out there in the woods :)
you can see some of the frost damage on the plants. Who knew they would take frost damage in late season frosts. Ahh I suppose it warns me in the documentation :) next year they'll be covered so the frost won't get em.... then I just have to fight the birds and rats for the berries.
In the interior there's a snowy mountain conifer belt where huckleberries grow wild with a semi-arid lowland, plain and valley zone between - this last is presumably where you are located (as are most people in the region). So your plants probably got frosted because of the different seasonal climate at your elevation, with spring leaf-out there coming ahead of when it would occur in their habitat. With for instance them being completely under snow all winter on the mountain slopes, until spring thaw. And of course slopes have better air drainage than depressions and flatlands.
heh heh they came from plants a hundred meters from the front door. I am from the west kootenays. The crazy frost hit in the middle of april when my crop was already blooming. The later blooms are happening now, and I've already got at least 5 berries ;) The plants do grow leaves before the ones in the woods.... they are a victim of their own success. Might be all the direct sun they get. It was 20C then it got really cold again overnight. Probably 0C or -1, it was a bad frost on the unprotected plants, turned the newest leaves brown and dead along with the flowers they died too. But there were 10% of the buds that hadn't opened yet, and they grew out later. New growth has packed on 10cm already. The frosted tips that died stopped growing for now, but I am sure they will start growing again. Also the cold changed the shape of some of the early leaves and made them wrinkled. I added some more woody debris and blood meal for nitrogen loading/acidifying. Cause the woody debris costs you nitrogen.
the woody debris costs you nitrogen The oft-repeated idea that this phenomenon will be seen affecting plantings of woody material appears to be false: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/wood-chips.pdf In the case of huckleberries and other forest adapted species how do they survive all that woody material (and other tree debris) being all over the ground in their habitat if its presence interferes with their nutrition? Why are red huckleberries so often seen growing out of old stumps in my area if woodiness makes a material unsuitable for them?
naw woody debris are definitely suitable for the huckleberries. Just when they are initially starting to rot, the organisms have to build up, using some of the nitrogen. I add a bit more blood meal to offset that. The woods huckleberries have some little berries on them now as well as more blooms. I have looked in the woods at the plants there to come up with the hypothesis that none of them came from seed. They initially were from seed, but then they got burned or something that killed off the original plant and left just the rhizome behind. then it spread out from rhizome again to make the patches I see. The reason I say that is because the wild ones don't resemble the growth of the seedlings. The seedlings have lots of branches coming from the center of what was the original shoot, like some kind of dense bush, and spreading from there. You can locate the center of a huckleberry patch in the woods, but there is no original seedling. I mean, unless they grow radically different in the woods, which is possible. Always on the lookout for the mythical seedling ;) I suspect the patches in the woods are hundreds of years old.
oh, they definitely grow in the forest, you just need to weed them and give them some water and nutrient... they'll probably produce better. I'm not actually advocating that, though, just grow a few in your garden. They'll grow better than the ones in the woods, if you treat them right. PH 4 to 6. Quack grass is it's enemy. I know that the production levels of the huckleberry suck. But! I also think with some TLC you should get 2x the blossoms from each growth shoot. I understand if anyone is offended by this project. Huckleberries hold a special place in peoples hearts. Nothing like foraging in the woods like a bear to remind you how special nature really is. I'm scared for nature, some of those rockin' huckleberry patches are slated to be clear cut logged. I suppose they will grow back from the rhizome. Forgot the most important difference between the woods plants and the garden ones. In the garden, the plants still have leaves when the snow melts. Never seen that in the woods before. The woods ones always are a stick with nothing on them except leaf buds. No idea if that is because they are seedlings or what else? I don't shelter them in the winter from the snow, and rats are free to chew on the stalks. The rats don't seem interested in the original stalks from when they were seedlings, just like to chew on the fresh ones. I would plant each seedling in a 60cmx60cm plot. Even though they were very tiny to begin with, after a bit(2 years) they can fill space in a hurry. My patch is too cramped for 7 of them. Ron B I'll keep in mind the woody debris might not do the ph thing I need - thanks for the info. I'll keep my eye on the ph of said crop.
As a rule of thumb I only apply acidic materials to the site. Things like alfalfa meal are off the list. Same with wood ashes. You don't want to go crazy with the blood meal, of course. Last year I applied the pine bark to the surface, all crunched up. Most of it decomposed but it left a few chunks laying around. This year, I went mulchin' crazy with the woody debris. I suspect it'll take a few years to break down since they are larger chunks. Sadly, I think there's some calcium in my water. I might want to think about making a rain collection system to water the calcifuge(runs from chalk) plants. Probably make it easier to maintain the ph. So Ron B brought up the fact that overall the decomposition of the woody debris doesn't deplete nitrogen in the ground. Last year I didn't add any additional nitrogen to the woody decomp and it worked good. This year, though, I thought since the plant is the shallowest rooted sucker I'd seen, I would apply additional nitrogen. I mean, whats the worst that could happen? ;) It's not really falsifying a theory though since I didn't take much empirical data. On the other hand, since last years leaves are still on the plant, I can say the leaves are much larger. Also the plant is much larger, but that's what happens over the years. lol "much" isn't a measurement, I know. There's a really healthy looking plant in the woods I am using for comparison. I didn't do something like pick a crappy plant and claim mine are growing better! I compare my best growing one to the best growing one in the woods I could find. I'm not interested in some fantasy-world data to complete my own confirmation bias. I need real world data to either validate or falsify what I am doing.
The branches that got frosted have grown little leaf buds. I wonder how long until they open and sprout new branches themselves? Seems like it takes about a month for new growth to become dark green then sprout little growths of it's own. The process starts at the bottom and works it's way up to the tip of the branch. The growth nodes I thought would never sprout leaves, look like they are going to do it. It's the density of the plants growth that is abnormal. So many side branches! The fresh growth tips are soft and the wind blows them around. The rain beats them down and stuff. Seems like 2 kinds of growth shoots come out. One keeps growing and growing, while the other pumps out a quick short branch, fully formed from the leaf bud.
MOAR cold! hah it was 9 degrees overnight in july..... anyways.... So! After a bunch of testing and ph testing, the following substances have been found to lower soil ph: aluminum sulphate, elemental sulphur and coffee(grounds and liquid), peat moss, wool compost. Anything containing calcium will raise the ph. Woody debris/ground cover won't change the ph. In the woods, the ph is changed when the calcium is leached out of the ground due to anaerobic decomposition from excessive moisture buildup with organic debris. The woody debris actually take so long to decompose, they don't change anything. Same goes for pine needles and crap, even though it's material is ph 3.5 or so it doesn't do squat, at least nothing I could measure. But, feel free to try it yourself. You just need lots of woody debris and a ph test kit or meter. The ph amendments I am using are peat moss, coffee grounds and some elemental sulphur on the blueberries. I do have aluminum sulphate for emergencies but I try to keep it from getting out of control.
over time the nutrient levels fell drastically, even though I had added more blood meal to the mix. Little black spots formed on the leaves and crap. Then I pumped it up with some fertilizer! The pine needles and wood chips and crap won't pony up enough nutrients for the plants to live on, that's for sure. Ph is good, about 5.6, but I sprinkled on a tiny bit of sulfur to counteract the calcium in the water. In the woods the ph is 6.5, so that's pretty high... only a couple decimals below the crud-ground here at 6.8. In conclusion - the woody debris kill the weeds but don't contribute to the nutrient content of the soil. I'll need to do a more exhaustive test to see if the debris actually depleted the ground.
The plants are growing nicely! The rhizomes are now beyond the edge of where they were planted. I think part of one of the plants got dried out, they would probably grow better in partial sun. Don't have to water as much. I wonder how the growth will do outside of containment in ph 6.8. Seems good at ph 6.5 in the woods? There are no berry plants growing around here in the valley... but they are just over there on the side bank. I can gather more data from the woods themselves, to see what ph they are growing at out in the wild. Never really just went into the deep woods and did a test, just did a couple of tests over there on the bank where the closest plants grew. I can throw a rock from where I had planted the huckleberry seedlings and hit a plant, so... shouldn't it grow right here with no problem?
It shouldn't be a problem. Many plant species don't have too narrow of a window of growing conditions -- they can't move, after all, so need to adapt to local conditions.
Even though this year was terrible weather, there was no late-season frosts to cost me the berry flowers. Unfortunately a valley pocket gopher ate quite a bit off one of the plants. I used the "black hole trap" to kill it. Got a couple handfulls of black huckles - mmm mmm good! The plants themselves are extremely bushy so it's hard to find the berries. I have determined that blood meal is their ideal fertilizer. I also add a little bit of earwig turds, some kind of organic bloom fertilizer. I don't try and control the ph any more - the plants seem happy at 5.8-6.8.
The blueberries are growing much better due to an application of Aluminum sulfate and elemental sulfur. A couple years ago the PH rose to 6.8 which was lethal! Now my process involves testing the PH every spring and adding handfuls of sulfur to control it. This year the plants grew 90cm. In the past I was using chemical fertilizer that controlled the PH for me, but now it's organic - so I use coffee grounds and sulfur. I've still got an entire point to drop on the scale before things are ideal. I drop half a PH point per year - easing them into good growing. If you can't manage to do that - your plants will definitely die. My friends plants started out 90cm tall and now are 5cm tall, they are dying from high PH - but it does take a couple years. Lucky the huckleberries aren't like that, but they will die from not enough water or fertilizer - just like any plant.
