SHRUB, CRANBERRY, American

Vaccinium macrocarpon

Seeds per pack ~ 25

Germination: 91%  (Packed for 2023)

Cranberries have crept along in acidic soils in North America since long before humans arrived to appreciate them. Native Americans harvested them by hand and dried them for future use. European settlers fashioned wooden scoops to harvest the berries. Since the 1960s, most berries have been "wet harvested" by flooding cranberry fields, knocking off berries with special machinery, then harvesting the berries that float to the surface (because hand-harvesting is so taxing, with the berries growing only a few inches above the ground on clump-forming often evergreen sub-shrubs).

A woman in New Jersey in the early 20th century, Elizabeth Coleman White, domesticated the related blueberry at her family's cranberry farm in Whitesbog, NJ, while another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Lee, invented and popularized "Cranberry Sauce" from her farm in New Egypt, NJ, and was one of three founding members of the Ocean Spray cooperative.

Cranberries do not need a bog to thrive. They grow along the mossy edges of moist woods, meadows, creeks, rivers and swamps. They even can be found growing in sand dunes by the beach. They tend to prefer sandy soils and certainly like acidic soil. Seeds should be cold-stratified for 90 days. Keep seedlings free from weed pressure. NOTE: Because we have a limited amount of these seeds and each seed is unique and potentially precious, we do not conduct germination tests (which would require sacrificing hundreds of seeds) on breeding mixes like this one.