Well, the best tasting blueberries are low bush berries, grown in the blueberry barrens of Maine. They also have greater nutritional value. But are on the small side. I’m not aware of being able to cultivate them to raised beds, though.

Sorry I can’t be of any real help. But I brought your question to the top of the queue, so there is that.

No matter what variety you select, be sure to give them a nice base of peat and/or pine needles. They need an acidic soil. Have fun!

"Best tasting" is always going to be a very subjective analysis :-) Here in WA state (with the largest US commercial blueberry production) most berries sold in grocery stores are northern highbush - Duke, Chandler, Elliott, Blueray, Bluecrop, Darrow - they ALL taste good!!

As to being able to cultivate in raised beds, of course you can. And that is often suggested for those with less than ideal soil conditions as you can tailor raised bed soils to your specific requirements. But you will need to stay on top of watering needs as the plants dislike drying out. btw, adding sulfur to the soil is a better method of acidification than peat (and pines needles do nothing at all).

If you space them in a zig-zag manner you should be able to get 4 plants per bed. And I always suggest planting those that have a range of harvest periods - early, midseason and late - together, both for cross pollination purposes and to lengthen the harvest period for the ripe berries.

Be sure to protect from deer, birds and other critters. They like the fruit as much as we do!!

I grow some of my blueberries in raised beds. Our beds are approximately 4'x4' and they aren't very raised, but they work nicely for allowing walking space around the bushes. We have one bush per bed. Depending on the variety, you could probably fit 2 or 3 bushes per 8'x4' bed.

My Jersey, which is about 7 years old, takes up its 4'x4' pretty completely. Berkley is about 3 and still has a fair amount of space around it, but it will probably want most of its space. I have a Bluegold that has suffered some from wildlife damage when it was a baby, so it's definitely small for its age, but being a smaller variety, I suspect it will only need about half of its bed; it has bulbs and similar in the corners.

I have two others, a Northland and a native, that live outside the beds. All seem to do pretty equally in terms of growth. I would say I get more of the berries from the ones in the beds (well, except poor Bluegold, which hasn't gotten back to berrying size), but I think that's more that the ones outside the beds are just too close to the woods and easy pickings for birds.

Jersey is doing wonderfully, and Berkley is a great producer. I think I like the flavor of Berkley a bit better. The beds are surrounded by a metal fence, but it has wide openings that allow bunnies and turkeys to still run through. We cage all but Jersey (too big) with tall bunny wire. It protects them from critters that want to nibble on the branches and steal the berries and lawn services that don't realize that they've walked three feet into a garden with their string trimmers. Birds can still get to them, but it's at least a bit of deterrent. You'd have to net or tent if you really want to protect your fruit from everything.

Please ignore the fact that these beds seriously needed to be weeded in this picture ... but that's Jersey in the front and Berkley being overrun by a weed in the back. This was taken around November (just before final weeding and raking), I can try to find some spring or summer pictures later. You can sort-of see the dark green wire cage around Berkley if you look really carefully.