Pink Lemonade

• Blueberry ‘Pink Lemonade’ is a rabbiteye blueberry; this type is more compact.
• Rabbiteye blueberries also have lower cold requirements; ‘Pink Lemonade’, for example, only requires 300 hours of temperature below 45 degrees F

Anyone who grows backyard blueberries knows that some of the berries may turn pink before they finally ripen to a familiar dusty blue. When a Pink Lemonade blueberry is ripe and ready to eat, however, it is, in fact, pink. Though not a first, this intriguing coloration is “still somewhat unusual” for a ripe, harvest-ready blueberry, according to Agricultural Research Service plant geneticist Mark K. Ehlenfeldt.

Ehlenfeldt has his laboratory, greenhouse, and test plots at the Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research and Extension in Chatsworth, New Jersey, about 60 miles south of Newark in the state’s pine barrens.

Here’s more about Pink Lemonade and a glimpse of several other interesting blueberries developed through the Chatsworth research.