Start with plants in either two-inch or one-gallon pots. Order your plants early from a reputable nursery. In your garden, work in the peat moss or compost and adjust the pH during the fall prior to spring planting. Stang's research plots were located on a loamy sand soil. Adding more does not increase plant growth substantially. Elden Stang, professor of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin, plants grow best when up to about seven pounds of peat moss is incorporated into each 100 square feet of row. The ideal is soil of pH 5 that is also high in organic matter.Īccording to research by Dr. The plants grow well in the acid soils of our region. It receives sun most of the day and yet is protected from the brutal northwest winds of winter by a thick blanket of drifted snow.
My lingonberry garden has a southeastern exposure. Locate your planting in a sunny spot on land with good air circulation and soil drainage. The simplest preparation is lingonberry sauce: 3 cups washed fruits, 1 1/4 cups sugar and 1 cup water. Lingonberries are very rich in vitamin C - Scandinavians and native tribes of northern Canada use the fruit as a cold remedy. Use them in any recipe that calls for cranberries. Pancakes covered with lingonberry syrup are a Swedish tradition. Make them into jam for a superb roast goose and venison topping. Or wash, drain and freeze them for use later in the season. Pick the firm, deep red fruits and refrigerate immediately sound fruit will keep for up to three weeks. Lingonberries are slightly smaller than cranberries but otherwise look and are cooked the same. But when the time comes - usually just in time for Thanksgiving - better have your recipes ready. Plants need two to three years to begin bearing good crops, according to Diana MacKentley of St. Besides, mixing fruit of several varieties will tickle your palate with all the fine, tart nuances of lingonberry flavor.īumblebees are the best natural lingonberry pollinators. Lingonberries are self-pollinating, but cross-pollination will produce larger fruits that ripen earlier. In my experience, fruits that ripen in the cooler temperatures of fall generally have the best color and flavor. This is not as bad as it sounds, however. The second crop is usually the largest and often the only one of the season. Open flowers are only hardy to about 30°, meaning the first bloom is usually nipped by a late frost. The summer bloom, which occurs when fruits from the first bloom are ripening, produces fruits that ripen in late September and October. The May bloom produces fruits that ripen in midsummer (July and August here in northern Maine). Small, pinkish white, lily-of-the-valley-like blossoms open in tight clusters near the tips of one-year-old shoots and make an attractive display in border plantings. Dan Hartmann, of Hartmann's Plantation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, notes that this potential for a double crop is part of what makes these plants attractive. Also called cowberry or foxberry, it's the type more commonly found at nurseries. majus, is a slightly taller shrub with larger leaves and flowers. minus (also called the mountain cranberry) is a low-growing plant that blooms only in the spring the European and Asian native, V. The wild North American species of lingonberry, Vaccinium vitis-idaea var. This shrub is handsome enough for ornamental use - as a small-scale ground cover or informal edging around larger acid-soil plantings, for example.
The glossy, dark green leaves are 1/8- to 1/2-inch long and usually tinged red when new. Lingonberry plants spread by underground runners to three feet. In warmer climates, such as USDA Hardiness Zones 9 and 10, lingonberry neither grows well nor reliably survives summer. In fact, it's one of the few fruits that gardeners can grow successfully in those cold climates. In addition to inherent cold-hardiness, once covered with insulating snow, it survives northern winters from New England to Minnesota. The lingonberry is a 12- to 18-inch-high evergreen shrub native to northern temperate, boreal and arctic regions of Europe and North America.
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