Do you know what species your bushes are or where they originally came from? My grandfather had owned land in upstate NY that was covered with low and high-bush blueberries. My father cleared the land around the bushes and they grew to be huge.
I would love to know a good way to be able to buy "wild" blueberry plants but it's seemingly pretty hard to say "does this one taste like real blueberries or more like store-bought ones?" I'd be tempted to try to cultivate the ones on my grandfather's old land but I live out of the US now and it would be hard to get them to where I live so I'm instead shopping online and in farm centers for them.
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edited to add: I have the same issue with a few currant bushes that came from my other grandfather's side of the family.
I don't know what species they are, unfortunately. If I had to guess, possibly Vaccinium corymbosum. That's another reason I'd love to sequence them; genomic data would help identify their taxon (or since there isn't a pre-existing reference for high-bush blueberries[1], it would define it). Transcriptome sequences would help characterize them. If anyone would care to (crowd?)fund the effort, it would be amazing to create a reference genome for for the high-bush blueberry.
To the best of our knowledge, they are truly wild and native. If your grandfather's land was near ours (Dutchess County), they may very well be the same species.
We mowed the field grass around the bushes each year to reduce competitive vegetation, and our bushes also grew to be huge. We never used pesticides or fertilizer, so they grow well where the conditions are right.
The land was in Broome county so perhaps similar. My father tried fertilizing some of them once with some commercial 10-10-10 NPK that he had laying around and while I think it did help them grow pretty big they also stopped giving much fruit for the next few years. I think they're best just left to themselves.
I would love to know a good way to be able to buy "wild" blueberry plants but it's seemingly pretty hard to say "does this one taste like real blueberries or more like store-bought ones?" I'd be tempted to try to cultivate the ones on my grandfather's old land but I live out of the US now and it would be hard to get them to where I live so I'm instead shopping online and in farm centers for them.
--
edited to add: I have the same issue with a few currant bushes that came from my other grandfather's side of the family.