Spartan

Spartan is a northern highbush cultivar released in 1977 that has survived nearly fifty years on the strength of its eating quality rather than its shipping quality. Michigan State University's blueberry variety bulletin puts it plainly by grouping Spartan with Patriot as u-pick cultivars, prized for flavor but held back from commercial production by soft fruit. Penn State's guide reads it more favorably, describing large, firm, light blue, highly flavored berries and rating it a good machine-harvest variety, so growers should expect the truth to sit somewhere between those two assessments depending on climate and picking timing. Where everyone agrees is on the site requirement: Spartan does not perform well on heavier upland soils, which makes it a cultivar for genuinely sandy, well-drained, acidic ground and a poor gamble anywhere marginal. For a backyard planting where fruit walks from bush to bowl, that softness costs nothing and the flavor is the whole point.