Lingonberry
Vaccinium vitis-idaea
Low and ground-hugging, wanting acid soil and rainwater — and content in shade as well as sun.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Partial shade through to full sun, and it tolerates the shade end well.
- Watering
- Keep it consistently moist with rainwater; lime-rich water does it no good.
- Feeding
- A feed for acid-loving plants in spring, over a pine bark mulch.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- A light trim in spring, taking out dead or weak stems.
- Mar–May Bud Break
- May–May Flowering
- May–Jul Fruit Set
- Jul–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Mar Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 12.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 12.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Running rhizomes
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2.5–5 ft across, about 2–4× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
It travels underground, and it does not stop where you would like it to. Taking the tops off does nothing at all to the run, and every fragment left behind is a new plant. In open ground the only boundary that holds is a barrier sunk two spits deep, or a container with its rim standing clear of the soil.
It spreads into a low mat by shallow rhizomes running through acid peat, which is how one plant becomes a groundcover and why it should never be hoed.
Figures recorded for Lingonberry itself. 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.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Blueberries, Cranberry, Heather
Green-leaved fruit with red flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com