Greendumb, For the first year ever honeybees worked my BB's, they had always ignored them but maybe a new hive moved in or I now have enough BB to make it worthwhile? Not sure. 95% of the pollination of my BB comes from the southern blueberry bee, It looks like a very small bumble bee with a white dot on it's face. Very docile, you can actually pet them when they are feeding. They collect both nectar and pollen. There are also some type of shiny green fly that works them. Another that is here in large numbers but I don't know how good they pollinate is the skipper butterfly. I also have some sort of small hornet or wasp and they chew a hole in the flower at the base and use that. There are also some large carpenter bee type bumble bees.

For many of the newer cultivars, the lines between NHB, RE, and SHB are being blurred and made obsolete. Cara's Choice in point: A cross between 1) A cross of NHB (primarly) and NLB that is considered a NHB (Darrow X sibling of Bluecrop), and 2) RE, SLB, and a high-bush like species from N. GA (a different form of SHB than the traditional RE X NHB?). In it's lineage includes V. corymbosum, V. angustfolium, V. darrowii, V. vergatum (ashei), and V. constablaei. The cross was made about 1977, even though not introduced until 2000. Imagine what more complex crosses are in the works since 1977. Except for legacy cultivars, I think the NHB, SHB, and RE are mostly useful for classifying, generally, what zones they can be grown in. The usefulness of the classification is being diminished by hybridization. Fruitnut: I thought I had read somewhere, in relation to peaches, that low-chill varieties grown in high chill areas can escape variable spring weather better than some high-chill varieties. I thought the idea was that it took longer for the low-chill varieties to break bud. Am I misunderstanding that? Would not the same principle (if it even is one) apply to blueberries? In regards to the question of how to get IndigoCrisp, Raven, etc, there would be a legal route, via formation of a partnership with covenants to abide by non-propagation and non-sale. I have contemplated throwing this out there before, but haven't yet decided it's worth my time to draft up a partnership agreement, form the escrow account, and reship purchased plants. It's the last point that would be the most arduous. Lots of irons in the fire already.

We've sold almost $32,000 worth of plants (actually WORTH more than that!) and still have a few things being sold every day. It's time for this thread to disappear, though, and I think adding a comment or two will take it off the top of the forum.

I live in Northwest Arkansas and I haven't seen any Berkleys around here. Most of Arkansas is rabbiteye and southern highbush country, so if they're not available here, it'll be hard to find them elsewhere in-state (there are a few nurseries a little south of here that I haven't been to). The way I grow mine is similar to Scotokla - I dig a 2 1/2' wide planting hole, about 12" deep in the middle, then fill it with a mix of 50% peat, 50% pine mulch (sometimes I add a small amount of cotton burr compost). I then mark the holes and build over it with a 3' wide raised bed, about 8-10" high in the middle, flat on top with steep sides. I then mulch over it with a heavy layer of pine straw to prevent it from floating off, with a total height of about 12-14" after I've added mulch, etc. The depth is a bit of overkill, about 2' below the crown, but I find the extra depth helps a lot with internal drainage (a major problem on heavy clay) and provides a nice pH buffer zone (native pH is 7.0). I plant my blueberries about 60% in the raised bed, 40% in the top of the planting hole. This hybrid-combination of a planting hole and a raised bed gives me most of the better qualities of each - it doesn't dry out as fast as a traditional raised-bed (much less a container) but has vastly better drainage and maintains a stable pH better than an at-grade planting. It's somewhat expensive & time consuming to plant them like this, but it pays off with a very low mortality rate. I've found that using a soil-less mix is hugely beneficial - people who amend native soils often seem to struggle with growing blueberries. Keith at Backyard Berries gave me the idea for the soilless mix, planting hole and slightly raised bed; my soil is so poorly draining, though, that I adopted the above method for planting using a much larger raised bed. For watering, I recommend putting in a good rain barrel system - I've recently expanded mine to 720 gallons, used mostly for my 29 or so blueberries. I also use a lot of sulphuric acid acidified water to keep the pH right at 5.0. If you plant them right, keep them from overproducing (lots of gardeners try to get too many berries, too soon, to the detriment of the plant), avoid using nitrate fertilizer and manage the water, growing blueberries is pretty easy.