Lingonberry Cultivation

Year old lingonberries were planted in Rabideau silt loam soils (Trapper Creek) amended with five combinations of canery fish waste (90% salmon, 10% halibut) as an organic fertilizer and wood chips recovered from rotting windrows of tree slask as a soil amendment. Control consisted of mineral soil. All treatments with fish waste showed the greatest overall plant growth. The treatment with fish waste only produced the greatest number and dry weight of stems and leaves of all treatments. Rhizome production varied widely among plants and did not differ among treatments. Vegetative growth was inhibited by addition of wood chips alone.

Talbot, V. and P. Holloway. 2002. Lingonberry Establishment on soils amended with fish waste and wood chips. Acta Horticulturae. 574:305-308.

Nearly all cultivars of lingonberries available commercially are from Europe and exhibit two flowering periods per season. In Alaska, the first flowering period is insignificant and results in small yields. The second flowering occurs too late in summer to produce mature fruit. Locally collected plants must be used to establish cultivated fields in Alaska. Tissue culture provides the best method for propagation of large quantities of local cultivars. No commercial tissue culture labs exist in Alaska, we we developed a small, on-farm tissue culture laboratory that is used to propagate local materials. The most significant challenges included minimizing culture contamination, adequate ventilation and cooling for culture establishment, defining optimum light and temperatures in a location where typical experimental design was impossible, developing a system of microshoot rooting that minimized sspace, and maintenanec of rooted cuttings for several months in winter prior to planting. Microshoot production has been extremely successful using Woody Plant Medium and Plant Preservative Mixture®, a biocide. Rooting was accomplished in thin layers of a peat-based medium rolled jelly-roll fashuin in plastic film. Although microshoot production was successful, rooting failures have been unacceptably high.

Talbot, V. and P. Holloway. 2002. On Farm Tissue Culture Production of Lingonberries. Acta Horticulturae. 574: 405-408.