Lingonberry

Size, growth and what to expect

It grows at a medium pace for its size, a few inches a year in our growth estimator. It makes a mat 2 to 6 inches high of thick, glossy evergreen leaves that turn purplish in fall. A clump spreads slowly into a colony that can last indefinitely.

Pink to white bell-shaped flowers nod in small clusters from May into July, and bumblebees and flies carry their pollen. The berries ripen in August and September, about 11 to 12 weeks after full bloom, bright to dark red and about a third of an inch across. They are tart and slightly bitter, and they hang on through winter and grow sweeter by snowmelt. Grouse, songbirds, voles, foxes and black bears eat them, and caribou and moose browse the leaves.

It grows wild across the far North, from Alaska and Greenland south to the mountains of New England, the Upper Great Lakes and northern Minnesota. Its home is rocky barrens, ledges, mountain summits, heaths, raised bogs and spruce woods. It is a plant of short, cool summers, and it suffers where summers are hot.

How to grow Lingonberry

Lingonberry grows in full sun or part shade, and it fruits best in sun. It needs an acid soil, about pH 4 to 5.5, that stays moist but drains, such as a sandy or peaty loam, and it will not take alkaline soil. Avoid low spots that stay wet. Set plants 2 feet apart, or a foot apart for a quicker carpet, and keep them 2 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship potted. Plant them in spring, as soon as the soil can be worked, and keep the root ball whole. Set the crown at the soil line and mulch with peat, rotted sawdust or bark, clear of the stems. Sow fresh seed at once on the surface of a moist, acid mix. For stored seed, hold it damp in the refrigerator for 90 to 150 days first. Seed kept a year or more seldom sprouts.

Water in dry spells, since its roots are shallow, and renew the mulch each spring. Plants make little top growth in their first year while the roots settle. Once the plants fill their space, cut them back to 2 or 3 inches above the mulch in very early spring to renew growth and fruiting.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, and a lone plant sets some fruit with its own pollen. Fruit set is much greater with pollen from another plant, so plant two or more from different seed. Seedlings first bear at about 3 or 4 years. Phytophthora root rot is its main disease on wet sites, and the insects and diseases of blueberries and cranberries may also turn up.