Low Bush Wild Blueberries

[slipshod]

I went over this entire site and have not found an answer to this question. An old timer told me that if a forest has wild low bush blue berries growing in it that at one time there was a fire there. Is there any truth to this? My hill property has hillocks and topography that does not match the current tree growth. I do not find excessive evidence of old stumps but there are blue berry patch in several locations. This land has had nothing done to it good or bad for over 50 years and there is every kind of tree from alder to walnut growing on it.
Black Cherry is growing everywhere, one corner of the property is almost all Sugar Maple, and apple trees run amok. A few dozen of the maples are huge and there is one old cherry that is 8 foot across at the ground, hollowed out from lightning is my guess. There has to be 5000 cherry that are 12 inches or better at eye height.

So far all I have done is give approximately 100 apple trees real good haircuts and taken some cull for firewood. Even at that I see quite a bit of growth in the tree in just the 4 years I have owned the place. I have also uprooted every multi flora rose bush I have found, don't know why but I hate them.

Now back to the blueberries! Is what he told me true? I know they sure are tasty little buggers but you sure work hard to pick them. I usually almost lay on the ground so my belt don't dig into my gut being bent over so far for so long.

[Tom]

Yes, no, maybe. :D

This link might explain it a little better: http://web1.msue.msu.edu/fruit/lowbush.htm

High bush and low bush blueberries bear every year.  But, Managed lowbush blueberries are either burned or mowed every other year and harvested every other year.  The low bush facilitates harvesting the berries since they are raked rather than picked.

[slipshod]

I'll be darned! Mine are  not managed that is for sure but I may take the brush hog to some of them just to see what happens.

[isawlogs]

It is true , at least where I am , that the blueberry plant is one of the first to come up after a forest fire .

[Sprucegum]

Logging, especially clear-cutting, also encourages the little berries to grow. The sees and roots are there waiting for something to remove the competion.

I see them more on sandy, well drained soil, acidic in nature where lots of sunlight can reach the ground between the trees.

[Coon]

 Open, porous soils such as sandy loam or course sands high in organic matter are well suited for growing blueberries. Clay soils high in organic matter can be used but they must be acidic. Peat and muck soils are not suited for blueberries because they retain large amounts of water. Blueberries require a soil pH of 4.5 to 5.5 for good growth and optimum fruit production. Soils higher than pH 5.8 can cause iron chlorosis and reduced plant growth and yield. A site with a nearby water source is beneficial. A sheltered location from the wind by shelterbelts or natural tree bluffs protect the plants from wind damage, and prevents the snow from being blown off the plants in the winters.  Spring runoff seems to be crucial to the early start of growth in the spring.  

The following spring after a fire goes through an area that has been known for its blueberries washes acidic ash into the soil replenishing of required nutrients for optimum growth.  Combined with hot and humid weather the blueberries will  often cover the ground like a blanket.  Come berry season the area should provide bushels ans bushels of berries for you and the bears. ;)  The bears usually won't bother you providing you keep your distance and don't get between an old sow with cubs.

Oh yeah, just remember not to eat too many berries when you go picking. :D  eh eh

[thecfarm]

I have about an acre that has been here for many years.I think they grow on soil that is not much good for anything else.Where mine are growing there maybe only a couple inches of good top soil than it goes right to nothing.Not like the rest of the ground I have here.I think mine go in cycles.Some years are great and some years are real bad.If I have a really great year,the next one is not going to be much good.There are blueberry barrens up north from me.They burn thiers with propane and they use a bush hog to bang up the bushes,not really cut them,but bruise the bushes up.Don't know about the fire story.I myself have never heard it around here.

[Dave Shepard]

I have also uprooted every multi flora rose bush I have found, don't know why but I hate them.

If you don't, they will take over. I have seen entire pastures taken over by this scourge. I go on a rampage with the tractor once or twice a summer and try to clear out as much of this stuff as I can.


Dave

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah oval-leaved and velvet-leaved blueberries are the two wild kinds we have hear. The oval-leaved is a bigger berry with pink globular (urn-shaped) flower and less of a bloom (the dull film you rub off the berry) appearing in leaf axils and the velvet-leaved is sweeter with greenish white or pale pink bell-shaped flowers on branch ends.

We used to pick 5 gallon buckets full on our fishing trips to the 'North Pole'. We just sat down on a log or rock and pulled them off by the handfuls. The biggest berries grew in the shade of other bushes and trees.

I tried growing some here at the house and they wouldn't take, not sour enough. They would continue to die back until they were a dried up twig.

We picked them on fire ground but also on 2-5 year old cutovers. The best crops were growing with sweetfern. The soil up there was heavy sand, rockier than all get out, sour softwood ground.

[RynSmith]

This is a pretty cool site from the USFS:

http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/

If you click on 'plant species' on the left you'll get to a pretty exhaustive list, separated by life form.  Each species description has a bunch of biological information too (range, soils, reproduction, etc.) on top of the fire effects data.

[Bow Saw]

Slipshod,
      This actually happened to us on the Northwest side of our property. A few years back, a caretaker of two neighbors away decided to burn the grasses!  Well he lost control of the burning field.  :-\The fire burned our immediate neighbor's chicken coop, :'( and encroached on our field of young spruce!   >:(   I was done my errands in town and was feeling some distress as I ended up following the firetruck's brigade to the end to the property line. The following year we had blueberry bushes! 8)
There isn't enough to harvest so we leave them to the wild creatures. If my husband bushhogs a path we get unwanted ATVs on our property (they've stolen lumber from our lumber yard). >:(
Mrs. Bow Saw