Grow Blueberries and Their Relatives to Benefit the Garden and Your Health

Isn't it something how the simple things we love as kids end up opening into whole worlds of discovery as we get older? Blueberries are a perfect example.

They were a treat when I was five—something Mom would bring home from the King Kullen market to our tidy neighborhood on Long Island's north shore. But when I was eight, my folks packed us up and moved to the wilds of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

Not long after we arrived, I lay in bed one night and watched fire sweep across the slopes of Blue Mountain, a terminal moraine about two miles from our house. I was sure it was a disaster, but my dad explained that the fires were set on purpose. Local people set them, he said, to burn off the underbrush and tree growth so more sunlight could reach the ground and spur the wild blueberries—a cash crop for those folks.

Later, in high school biology, I learned that commercial blueberries were developed in the early 20th century from wild species found in the marshy lands of the Pocono Plateau and the southern New Jersey pine barrens. The Pennsylvania species was mostly the high-bush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum, which can grow seven feet tall. Down in the poor sandy soils of southern New Jersey, the berries were mostly low-bush types, V. pallidum or V. angustifolium, topping out at 18 to 30 inches.

Since those wild species entered cultivation, breeders have developed all sorts of crosses between high-bush and low-bush types—generally called half-high blueberries—plus heat-tolerant rabbit-eye blueberries (Vaccinium virgatum) that thrive in the southern states. There are hundreds of named varieties descended from native North American species, and thousands more around the world. And that's just the blueberries.

Blueberries' tastiest cousins

As a teenager roaming the woods and fields of eastern Pennsylvania, I discovered that summer always meant sweet fruit for the picking—especially the huckleberries growing on the ridgetops along the Appalachian Trail. As much as I loved blueberries, those huckleberries (Gaylussacia brachycera) won my heart: their flavor was more intense and their sweetness unmatched.

If that genus name rings a faint bell, it's because the plant honors Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850), a French chemist we all remember from high school—his law says that at constant pressure, the volume of any gas increases in proportion to its absolute temperature. Oh, and he also figured out that water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume. And he discovered boron, too.

Today botanists still debate whether huckleberries are just a kind of Vaccinium or deserve their own genus. Whatever they decide, those berries made exploring the wild places of Appalachia both fun and delicious. I've only ever had huckleberry pie once, but I've never stopped craving another slice.

When I moved to California in 1985, I kept wandering the woods, and there I found a tall, rangy evergreen understory plant (Vaccinium ovatum) with dark blue-black berries that locals called huckleberries. I also came across another plant (V. membranaceum) with excellent fruit—also called huckleberries! Both range from northern California up into western Canada.

Back East, where melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age carved out bogs from Cape Cod to the wetlands around the Great Lakes, native cranberries (V. macrocarpon) grow. And what's Thanksgiving dinner without cranberry sauce? That pairing of cranberries and turkey goes all the way back to colonial New England, where wild turkeys roamed the woods and cranberries grew naturally in ancient glacial depressions.

Besides cutting through the richness of turkey and stuffing, the juice of these tart berries contains compounds that stop bacteria from sticking to urinary tract cells—taken regularly, cranberry juice has become a go-to for preventing urinary tract infections. It's also been shown to curb the mouth bacteria that cause tooth decay and gum disease.

Health benefits of the blueberry genus

But that's just scratching the surface of what the genus Vaccinium offers. Besides blueberries, huckleberries, and cranberries, it includes bilberries, lingonberries, and more than 4,250 other wild species worldwide. They're all part of the Ericaceae family, the heaths. Members of this family are among the richest sources of bioactive and nutritional compounds. Bioactive compounds are, among other things, antioxidants—meaning they patrol the bloodstream, mopping up dangerous oxygen radicals before they can do harm.

Here's what happens: through normal metabolism, some oxygen atoms break free from their tight bond in the oxygen molecule (O2). Those lone oxygen atoms go roaming through our system, oxidizing and damaging our tissues.

The bioactive compounds in heath-family plants grab those free-ranging oxygen atoms and neutralize them before they can cause trouble. These compounds are mostly phenolics—phenolic acids, flavonoids, anthocyanins, flavonols, and tannins.

Their health benefits are impressive. They help prevent inflammation disorders and cardiovascular disease, and they have protective effects that lower cancer risk. They're antimicrobial, and they guard against diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and neurodegenerative diseases. That antimicrobial action is especially noteworthy: Vaccinium berries inhibit the growth of Helicobacter pylori in the stomach. For years, doctors blamed stress for stomach ulcers, but it turns out the real culprit is an H. pylori infection of the stomach lining.

Studies have also shown that bilberry extract inhibits dangerous human pathogens like Clostridium difficile and Staphylococcus aureus, as well as Streptococcus pneumoniae.

As nutritional powerhouses, Vacciniums bring a lot to the dinner table. Blueberries, for instance, have one of the highest iron concentrations of any temperate fruit. Cranberries deliver nutritionally important amounts of magnesium, sulfur, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and nitrogen, plus micronutrients like manganese, zinc, molybdenum, copper, and boron.

According to a report in Science News for March 9, 2024, the secret to a blueberry's blue color lies in its wax coat. Blueberries, grapes, and some plums should look red because of their anthocyanins, but scientists at the University of Bristol in England found that the powdery waxy coating on these fruits contains nanostructures that scatter blue-to-violet wavelengths of light, making the fruits appear blue to our eyes. That wax looks transparent when you dissolve it off the fruit, but let it dry and it regains its blue-tinging power.

Blueberries and more in the garden

Finally, Vaccinium species and cultivars make wonderful landscape plants. Planted three feet apart, they form handsome hedges. Tuck them into beds and borders and they'll offer up fruit to you and your visitors. Low-bush types work beautifully as ground covers—and as treasure hunts for kids chasing berries. Come fall, the foliage puts on a show, shifting from orange to orange-red to fiery red-orange and even crimson.

To grow them well, a few things matter. They want acid soil, with a pH between 4.5 and 5.2. Test your soil before planting, and if the pH is too high, lower it with rotting pine needles, peat, and applications of sulfur.

Blueberry bushes grow slowly, and letting them fruit early on just slows them down more. Pick off any developing berries for the first four years and the plants will reward you with much bigger harvests once they're better established.

Once the bushes are mature, prune away up to three of the oldest canes each year—roughly a quarter of the whole plant. This keeps them pushing out heavy yields on newer wood. And plant more than one variety, since they're partially self-incompatible; growing several varieties together gives you more and bigger berries.

For low-bush blueberries used as a ground cover, mow them back with a lawn mower during winter. This stimulates fresh growth from the root crowns. In fact, that's exactly what those locals were doing when they set the mountains on fire back in Pennsylvania—the fire did the pruning while the roots survived underground.