Huckleberry
Vaccinium ovatum
Limy soil turns the leaves yellow — this is one for genuinely acid ground.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Mar–May Bud Break
- May–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Aug Fruit Set
- Aug–Sep Harvest
- Sep–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 6 ft 7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A fine surface mat, and nothing below it
- Working depth
- 4–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 5–7.5 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 16 in of soil
Hair-fine roots in a shallow felt, with no deep anchor to fall back on. It cannot chase water, so it is the first casualty of a drought and the first thing killed by a hoe. Mulch it, never cultivate around it, and never let it go dry in its first two summers.
The habit is Huckleberry’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Salal, Rhododendron, Ferns, Oregon Grape
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com