Preppy:

Ask them, not us. You haven't even told us where you live.

You do not, BTW, have to rely on Home Despot for blueberry plants. There are dozens of online sources for these plants.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Jock,

Use your Home Depot card for a good tool, but buy your plants from a reputable nursery. The archives of this forum have tons of nursery recommendations. Check any nursery on Dave's Garden Watchdog before ordering.

Home Depot in my city has had blueberry bushes for a few weeks. But I ordered my from ABC & got two half high bushes. They were hugh & in bloom!! And got one realy nice Little Giant from "jersey_blues blueberries" for $10.25 including shipping on Ebay. Yes, I said it, Ebay. He has 100% positive feedback. My litte guys looks better than the ones @ Home Depot, way better.

I found a great variety of plants from burntridgenursery.com I have not ordered from them but plan to. I researched them on davesgarden watch dog and they have a high % of positive reviews. They are in Washington state. The typical price for the ones they mail are $7.50 each.

Blueberry
Recent studies have suggested that consuming blueberries can enhance balance, coordination and short term memory, while improving urinary tract function and reducing cholesterol. Research also indicates that the extremely high level of antioxidants in blueberries may slow the aging process and may help in preventing cancer and heart disease. These plants are mature enough to bear fruit in a year or less. The varieties listed below ripen over a 3 1/2 month period. Simply freezing the surplus can ensure a year round supply. With our large selection of varieties, there are plants suited to most locations in the U.S. Blueberries appreciate a good mulch. You can use sawdust, compost or any other organic material. Reapply it every winter or spring. They like an acid soil high in organic matter. If your soil tends to be more alkaline and/or is lacking in organic matter, add a generous amount of peat moss. Southern Blueberries: Selected & developed for the South due to their lower chill requirements & higher heat tolerance, yet they are able to fruit well in mild winter zones such as Western Washington. They look different than Northern Highbush, being very ornamental & often evergreen. They offer more landscape possibilities than highbush cultivars.They can be grown as a container plant or as a semi-everbearing greenhouse plant. They have a higher pH tolerance and everbearing fruit qualities. The Northern Highbush are listed first, the Wild Eastern Lowbush are second and the Southern Blueberries are third. Within each category they are listed in the order of ripening. Regular size: 2-3 years old, typically 2-3 ft., bedgrown, branched, multistemmed plants with dense fibrous root systems. XLarge2 size: 4-5 year old plants, 3-5 ft. with multiple stems, big roots. Ball and Burlap : (4-6 ft.) Available on selected varieties only, please check listings. Pick up only.

WEYMOUTH BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum
Earliest ripening blueberry.

EARLYBLUE BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Earliest ripening, large delicious berries are cracking resistant; moderate yield, intolerant of wet growing site. Red fall color. Zone 5 - 8.

DUKE BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Productive, medium large, light blue berries of mild sweet flavor. Late blooming, early ripening, resistant to mummy berry. Orange fall color. Zone 4 - 8.
COLLINS BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
One of the best flavored sweet berries. Crack resistant with good size in grape like clusters. Early to mideason ripening. Long lasting fall color. Zone 5-8.

BLUEJAY BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Good dessert quality, medium to large fruit, productive. Highly resistant to mummy berry disease. Yellow-orange fall color, bright yellow branches in winter. Zone 4 -8.

HARDYBLUE BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
A very sweet, medium sized berry with superior flavor. Heavy yielding in midsummer. Widely adapted, especially tolerant of heavy clay soil. Yellow fall color. Zone 4 - 8.

EBERHARDT BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Popular local variety from Olympia, WA. Big fruits. Very productive & flavorful. Ripens mid-season. Zone 4-8.

REKA BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Heaviest bearing variety. Early-mid season ripening, fruit is medium sized.

BLUECROP BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Large, aromatic berries. Light blue, good dessert quality, very productive, ripening over a 6 week period in midsummer. Cracking resistant. Red fall color. Zone 4 - 8.

OLYMPIA BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Very sweet & especially flavorful. Medium to medium large fruit, ripening midsummer. Frost susceptible in spring. Red and orange in fall. Zone 5 - 8.

WASHINGTON BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Highly productive of especially flavorful, firm berries in midsummer. Zone 4-8.

RUBEL BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Intensely flavored fruit is the main reason this old variety is still widely grown. Its small fruit makes it the perfect berry for baking. Rubel has twice the antioxidant level of most blueberries, making it a healthy choice.

DARROW BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Huge fruits with a good slightly tart flavor. August ripening. Orange fall color. Mummy berry resistant. Zone 5 - 8.
RANCOCAS BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Highly productive of very flavorful small fruits in tight clusters. Fine red fall color & winter stem color. Fruit can split in heavy summer rain. Like Rubel, high antioxidant fruit.

DIXIE BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
Large fragrant berries are late ripening, very productive. Mummy berry resistant. Zone 4-8.

JERSEY BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium corymbosum)
An older variety widely grown still, because of broad climatic tolerance & disease resistance. Productive of medium sized sweet berries. Late ripening. Yellow fall & winter color. Zone 4-8.

O'NEAL BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium sp.)
Very early ripening of medium large fruit. Among the best flavored of the Southern blueberry varieties. Gray/green foliage with red stems. 5-6ft. eventual height. From North Carolina. Zone 5-9. Self fruitful.

MISTY BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium sp.)
Highly ornamental selection with blue/green leaves & pink flowers. Heavy yield of large to medium large fruit of very good quality. Semi-evergreen in mild winter regions. To 6 ft. eventual height. From northern Florida. Zone 7-10.

SUNSHINE BLUE BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium sp.)
A dwarfing evergreen blueberry to 3 ft. height. Bright pink flowers in spring, followed by delicious fruit ripening over a 2 month period in midsummer. Low chill variety, tolerating high soil pH better than other varieties, yet well adapted to the Pacific NW. Zone 5 - 10.

Funny you mention Burnt Ridge, I was just reading the same catalog (after doing the same research and figuring they were about the best mail-order nursery) though they were out of the stuff that I wanted... Wondering: was it just bad luck for me, or did i maybe happen to tick them off?

Anyway: on the original question: the HD around here (Nor Cal) gets blueberries around February and still has a couple even now, although they look way picked through. And there prices weren't that amazing besides... I'd echo the others and buy them elsewhere.

I had a very bad experience buying blueberries from home depot. The plants were infected with a virus and the people in the garden center were clueless. I've had a good experience with getting blueberries from burnt ridge nursery, nourse, and hartmann's.

our HD still has lots of blueberries. They look terrible though. Really bad. Here's another mail order blueberry nursery in NC..

Here is a link that might be useful: Finch Farm Blueberries

WOW I guess the home depot where I live is exceptional. The plants I bought were 4 times as big as mail order rip-offs. I got 4 bushes from about 3 feet tall with lots of shoots for 10 bucks a pop. They are thriving. I also bought trees from Lowes and was much more impressed with the 7'-8' trees I got there than the 2' whips I paid an arm and a leg for. The plants from the big Box stores here hail from Tennessee nursheries that are listed on the label. Here they have come and gone.

Just my .02

Carl

MY HOME DEPOT HAD BLUEBERRY BUSHES BUT WITH UNKNOWN NAMES??I ORDERED MINE THROUGH HAARTMANNS AND THEY ARE DOING WONDERFULLY.

Mustardseed, you need to early a lot earlier in the year (Jan or Feb) from Burnt Ridge because they sell out of most things by now.

Carl, glad it worked out for you so far, but there are lots of posts here about the dangers of big box stores (although I'll admit I've been known to grab a sale item or two for instant gratification). Paying an extra $5-10 for a healthy tree of the correct variety on the right rootstock from a reputable source, is a drop in the bucket when you compare it to the amount of time and effort that goes into growing fruit.

The Lowes here had the best looking plants for sale, They were well established (looks-wise) multiple branches, looked about 4 times bigger than the bare root plants I ordered from a local blueberry grower here. If memory serves, they were $10 each. And if I had not purchased so many other plants already (most of what I bought I bought for resale), they would have seemed very worth trying. Again, just the size difference from what you normally see for sale and these (normally you see ones that look like one smaller than a pencil branch maybe with a few lateral branches, but very puny) was pretty significant.

Hmm the blueberries I had shipped to me from Georgia look way better than the tiny things I saw at lowes yesterday. They were probably about 1ft versus 4-5ft for the ones I put in the ground last fall. They already provide (for the birds lol) a few blueberries. Still thought about grabbing on to try in hydroponics.

If they have the varieties you want (and you're willing to risk them being incorrectly labeled), blueberries are probably one of the safest fruiting plants to buy at a big box store (as compared with potted trees or anything bareroot). And, rjinga, those blueberries you got were puny compared to what you'd get from a reputable nursery (but at least they were correspondingly priced).

About 2 weeks ago, I bought 2 blueberry, 2 raspberry, and 2 blackberry from lowes in MD for just $2 each. They were on some sort of clearance, they were only about 1.5' tall, but for $2 each, if I get a half pound of berries, I've already beat supermarket prices, and I'm sure these will taste better.

Looking forward to future years when they really start to take off.