Bushel and Berry™ Blueberry Buckle™ Blueberry

Purchase 2 of these and diligently followed instruction to acclimate plants to outdoor temps. Made sure they were in shaded area during hottest part of the day and they both died within 3 weeks. I'm sure they would have been good producers in a cooler zone as Stark has such a good reputation. But, it was a bit of a costly mistake and very disappointing. :-(

I currently have 3 Blueberry Buckles (2 from a local garden center, 1 from Stark Bro's)
In my experience I will say that Blueberry Buckle from Bushel&Berry is the most vigorous, hardiest, and fastest growing variety of any blueberry plant that I raised. Before I applied fir bark mulch (which I should've done from the start), my Southern Bluebelles, Pink Icing, Bountiful Blue, and Biloxi were suffering from heat stress except for Blueberry Buckle.

It was also the fastest growing blueberry in terms of foliage, its mini leaves are what makes it stand out from the rest of the other varieties. All 3 Buckles I have grow branches and leaves so quick that it can get pretty ugly. Like, some stems grow outward, some inward, and then some grow very swirly and getting tangled with the other stems.

In terms of fruit, they can take a while before a good size batch of berries are ready for harvest. It took 2-4 weeks (since early may) for me to harvest the first batch of berries and when I finally did, I got small dark hued blueberries that were firm, crunchy and really sugary sweet with a mild classic blueberrry flavor with a slight mint essence. Im finding that with this variety you may leave it on the plant for almost a month and it still wont go mushy. It's the end of August as I'm writing this review and I'm still waiting on one of my buckle plants to yield me the 4th and final batch of blueberries.

For the one I specifically purchased from Stark Bros: I purchased 1 Blueberry Buckle and 1 Jelly Bean on May 30th and arrived on June 6th. Off-the-bat Blueberry Buckle was the biggest one that came in a 1qt pot of any variety I purchased before and after. I transplanted both in 2 gallon pots to start off with using soil comprised of Azalea/Camelia formulated soil, compost, more peat moss, soil acifier, and perilite, and topped off with fir bark mulch. As of now it's still growing and doing well, but as I stated before with this variety, it's foliage growth is crazy looking. It has a good amount of time before this one can give me blueberries, but overall it's in good shape.

Oh btw I try to keep my soil ph level at 4.8 but no higher than 5.4. Oh and always mulch.

The bushel and berry products that I purchased simply couldn't survive the Texas heat. Sticky with Misty and O'neal