With the exploding interest in growing backyard vegetables and herbs, the old idea of edible landscaping is back.
Gardeners are discovering they can grow more good food by landscaping with shrubs, trees and vines that are not only ornamental but productive, too.
Luckily, there are a number of plants that are up to the task. Blueberry bushes, for example. From white spring blossoms, to beautiful and nutritious blue fruit in summer, to the bright crimson leaves of autumn, and even the subtle beauty of the red sheen of the branches in the winter landscape, a blueberry bush is truly a shrub for all seasons.
You can choose half-high blueberries such as Northland and North Blue, which grow 2 to 4 feet tall, or highbush blueberries like Blue Jay and Blue Crop, which grow 5 to 7 feet tall. Planting two different varieties increases fruit set.
Blueberries are easy to grow throughout the Midwest, with a couple of caveats. One, you’ll need netting or other protection to keep birds from beating you to the harvest.
Two, if your soil is alkaline, you’ll need to amend it to provide the conditions blueberries require. For each blueberry plant, stuff a 5-gallon bucket of water with sphagnum peat moss. After the moss soaks up all the water, dump the bucket’s contents into the planting hole and mix it into the soil. Mulch each blueberry bush with pine bark chips, pine needles, or shredded oak leaves. Add fresh mulch as the old breaks down.
Every two years in winter, spread 6 ounces of powdered sulfur in a wide ring around each plant.
For those who have alkaline soil but don’t want to bother creating an acid soil for blueberries, serviceberry is an easy answer. An ornamental small tree or large multi-stemmed shrub, serviceberry is also beautiful in every season: white blossoms in spring, red summer fruits that turn black as the berries mature, excellent fall color, and smooth, gray bark for winter interest.
And the taste of the berries? “Better than highbush blueberries,” says woody landscape guru Michael Dirr.
Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) is another great candidate for an edible landscape. It boasts white flowers in spring and showy, long-lasting, purple-black berries that remain on the plant most of the winter. In autumn, its wine-red foliage makes a fine show.
If frozen before eating to break down the tannins in the fruit, the richly-colored, flavorful fruit is delicious in smoothies, muffins and pancakes.
Currant and gooseberry shrubs and grapevines are also good candidates to consider for an edible landscape.
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