Learn from Darren Morgan about the basics on blueberry planting and care to produce the best crop this summer and beyond. He’ll discuss the varieties that are available this year and when they’ll be ready for picking.
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So blueberries we tend to think of our fruit tree crops as kind of these Eternal constants you know we talk about figs and they’ve you know been around forever even what we think of as modern hybrids like the apple trees you can still get Gravenstein apples they were a
Variety that was originally hybridized back in the 1500s so really really ancient blueberries aren’t like that up until World War I blueberries were a strictly American phenomena all wild harvested they they believed they could not domesticate them um in 1910 1911 a lady named Elizabeth white her her father was a was
A farmer of cranberries and Wild Harvest crops in that in in the east coast New Jersey um and she managed to talk him into getting a college education in egg and uh she started making collections from the wild she she encouraged some of her workers to pick really good
Varieties and flag them so she could come and propagate them and uh so she got connected with uh with a gentleman named uh Fred koville U at Department of a and they started trying to breed these things and eventually Fred koville moved his research operation out to Washington
State and that became the the real big boom of Pacific Northwest blueberry production so up until 1911 there were no specialized varieties it was all just go out in the woods and harvest them so a very very modern fruit so the Contemporary blueberry um is a woody
Shrub and pretty large I mean six or 7 ft is not at all uncommon although they’re often pruned just a little bit smaller than that but in some ways it behaves kind of more of a perennial um it you it’s a plant that needs to be refreshed periodically so we prune out
Old wood to allow new wood to develop and then we thin for for for uh opening out the light and air circulation we’ll talk more about that near the end of the presentation but so they’re a shrub but they’re kind of kind of perennial in Behavior as well um like very many
Commercial fruits they are will not accept their own pollen there are exceptions we’ll talk about that in varieties but for the most part you need two or more different blueberry varieties for fruit to set and you also need pollinators these are bollin like the the whole family of the aums are um
You need those pollinators present during the the flowering period um so commercially they pollinate them with honey bees or with Orchard Mason bees bumble bees also do a fair amount of of pollinating though bumblebees sometimes will will chew through and get the get the nectar from the underside rather
Than going through the pal because they don’t fit into the flower very well uh so pollination is important and the good news is there’s not a lot of genetic problems like with apples there’s certain varieties that don’t cross with each other or hazelnuts are Infamous for how difficult it is to match up
Pollination blueberries are pretty simple as long as they are blooming at the same time or have enough overlap of Bloom time and they’re two different varieties they will they will accept the pawn you won’t have any major problems including from different species and that’s why there are so many hybrids out there
Now so most of what you see in the Pacific Northwest your traditional commercial blueberries are what they call Northern High Bush blueberries now Northern High Bush blueberries um require a certain amount of chilling there’s some variation from selection to selection but they require a fair amount
Of chilling to produce this is why you don’t see them being produced in California or Georgia or Florida um they can’t do these types of blueberries here um so they’re typically the most productive and and best flavored berries and the largest berries available and they are the backbone of the industry
Here they and they are sometimes used to hybridize into other species for specialty varieties as well in the South you see southern high Bush and rabbit eye blueberries and there’s also a couple other species blueberries that are involved which are Evergreen and uh those are typically low chill
Requirement they do really good across the gulf for example in the Carolinas also but they are not um really well suited to our area it’s not like we can’t grow them and people do occasionally grow them but um they don’t produce very well in our environment they really are
Suited for a much significantly much milder clim within those species and groups hybridization is is happens on a regular basis there’s constantly like all of Agriculture and and Commercial horiculture there’s there’s a lot of new varieties being developed all the time and um they’re often intermixing either the northern and southern groups or
Bringing in other species of vaccinum and breeding them in to provide some desirable characteristics whether that’s from an ornamental standpoint or a production standpoint so with that much going on out there choosing a variety gets complicated in general um if you’re getting started with blueberries I would
Recommend you just start out with the with the Northern High Bush because everything I think all the literature is about them that’s where you find the most reliable information I’m growing them um they break up the production season on Northern hybrids in Northern High bushes into basically um three
Production Seasons as it were so we have an early production cycle early production cycle usually starts mid to late June on a good year your midseason is where the vast majority of the varieties come into production and an early part of the midseason season might be Fourth of July tail end of the
Midseason is maybe Late July early August they’ve been intentionally breeding for later and later production to uh to expand the the harvest season on blueberries and you can’t really do much on the front end of it because again FL flight have pollinators for Berry production you can’t really get
Blueberry production into April or anything like that U just couldn’t happen so they’ve been working later instead and some of the late varieties start August a few of them start in September and they go well through September on the later varieties there’s a batch of good varieties out there
Sampling on the screen is very much a uh a representative sampling only uh and so there’s a lot lot more out there a few particular note from the list um early blue is widely produced commercially it is for my money not the best early blueberry but it’s the one you’re most
Likely to run into in commercial operations earlier varieties like blue ATA are available um for better quality early varieties go just a little bit later into the season and look at varieties like Duke which is a nice big mild Berry or Spartan which has an almost perfect sweet tart blend
It’s one of the few blueberries people actually come in and shop for by name at the nursery um but it is slower growing um it takes a lot longer for the bush to get up into production and up to production size it’s just a slower developing Variety in the midseason uh Berkeley
Are considered widely the most Nationwide the most popular variety they’re a nice powder blueberry with a uh medium to large size they got a pretty good size but they’re not huge um sweet with again just a hint of of sharpness to them uh blue crop is again your main commercial variety though that
Comes and goes a little bit in in fads um I’m a big fan of Blu-ray for that midseason it’s a little bit bigger Berry and it’s a it’s a heavy heavy producer late season has always kind of a challenging season because with your later berries the color on the berry develops
Well ahead of the sugar and it’s sometimes hard to tell when they’re really rip um so have patience and it will be well rewarded um Chandler is the kind of the front end of the late season it’s like a mid too late transition in August a gigantic Berry um considered wi they
Considered the largest blueberry on the market today with a very mild sweet uh sweet to Berry the other thing I like about Chandler is its length of production season so most individual varieties produced for just a few weeks but uh Chandler goes on for like four to five uh much much more substantial
Harvest season so it’s not as many berries all at once but spread out over a longer period of time and for the home Gardener that’s a huge Advantage though the commercial people don’t particularly like it um Elliot is widely used as the kind of the late RI and it’s one of the
Latest varieties with production happening late August and well into September Herbert and Ivan are sibling uh pairing that I really enjoy the flavor and fruit characteristics on but they pick scar when you harvest so when you pick them off the bush you get a little tear in that top of that Berry
Which means they don’t Fresh store worth of darn eat them right away or freeze them right away and they’re great but they’re not going to hold in the in the refrigeration for any period of time so those are some of the major major strains of varieties out there over the
Course of the year and as you can see in the handouts or if you’re online at home you can go to our website and look at our handouts online as well um you know we we’ll cycle through maybe 20 25 varieties in the course of a year
Because there are that many to play with and all of them have some some adherence and some unique characteristics once you get outside of the main sequence um there’s some specialty berries for some specific purposes the half High hybrids are berries that were developed for a colder Zone they
Really don’t provide any advantage here in the valley except maybe if you’re really high elevation um they but they will survive much colder Winters than we normally get so blueberry production is kind of limited to Western Oregon and Western Washington on the west coast because everything east of the Cascades gets too
Cold in the winter for them they really don’t like 25 to 30 below zero there are very few of the true High Bush varieties that will tolerate that with reasonable success but these hybrids readily tolerate this all the way down to USDA zone 4 so nominally 30 below
Zero climate um so they’re less productive but they they expand your production range for blueberries and most of them have North in the name or other Northern references like Polaris um North country north sky North Blue are commonly available um they’re not bad berries they’re just not the ideal bury for our
Climate there’s a number of high Bush hybrids where they’ve crossed the American High Bush Northern High Bush blueberry in with uh either Southern low Bush Southern High Bush rabbit eye or other uh blueberry species um a couple and there’s a lot of them out there a couple specifically of note that match
Up with Northern H bush in terms of growing characteristics noting meaning requiring a cross-pollination and compatible with Northern H bush so you can mix them in with your Orchards Legacy is a late to medium late variety with a very big uh plant uh six or seven feet is not at all uncommon on
Them they’re a very very large upright growing plant uh berries are a good size they not giant they have a really good blend of sweet and tart really good flavor characteristic and the bush itself is semi Evergreen um they tend to except for our coldest winters they tend
To hold Leaf through the winter giving them some ornamental value as well there’s no production benefit to that but if you’re growing a few around your yard that could be a nice thing sunshine blue is a short short variety about three to four feet maybe hitting five feet with lots of very
Small but but sweet berries it holds Leaf late but I would not class it as semi Evergreen for our climate there are others that are definitely are nocturn is kind of a new variety um it’s a very complex species cross with really good sweetness characteristic in particular and kind of a late production
Cycle beyond the high Bush hybrids there’s a whole lot of breeding that’s been going on in blueberry in the last decade or so producing a number of specialty varieties for the home Gardener specifically rather than for commercial production a lot of these in fact the vast majority of them are
Self-fertile you can throw one a single plant in a in a whiskey barrel or a large pot and have blueberries on your deck um so some good varieties in and there’s a there’s a ton of them out there now some good varieties in that can in that grouping uh
Perpetua uh it produ they class it as kind of an everbearing what that really means is you got kind of an early crop and then a paus and kind of a late crop on them um but a very long production cycle because of that the berries are modest they’re not really particularly
Large but the flavor is quite good and one of the very newest introductions for flavor characteristics pink icing and Peach sorbet are a couple of my personal favorites um and pink icing has a quite sweet flavor where Peach sorbet has a distinctively fruity overtone which is not necessarily
Characteristic of of blueberry they tend to be either sweet or tart this one has some some body to it that’s why the peach part of the name Raz is another fun one in the hybrid group to play with uh Raz produces a berry that even though it is a blueberry has taste characteristics
That are more match up almost with raspberries that definitely the tar and with some sweetness very sharp flavors it’s kind of fun to play with and then Jelly Bean is a little tiny guy if you want to put a little border planting around around your your patio or again
One in a in a container on your deck at at basically about two feet in size with a good volume production of small but but quite sweet berries so lots of berries out there there’s lots I get um coming in we got some hanging basket Sapphire Cascade midnight Cascade ones
That you can they’re really tiny berries but you can grow them in a basket they Trail down lots to play with out there and they’re all fun to work with and this is a good area for doing these these varieties we we do very well with them
So once we’ve made some ideas on selection of what you want to plant let’s talk about getting there from here when do we plant right now um one of the reasons we Host this class this time of year is that uh in February we have bar root blueberries and the big advantage
To be root blueberries is you can get older plants at a reasonable cost uh they’re typically either three or four year old plants um so they’re dormant they they handle really easily and they’re literally be Roots you you wrap them in damp newspaper and send them
Home you got to get them in the ground right away you can plant all of spring all through summer the later you get into the season the the more likely you are to have some shock or stress reactions from planting um so that’s something you want to be aware of for
Later plantings but we do continually restock container grown blueberries throughout the entire season because you can literally plant them year round here ball is almost as good as as late winter for planting U because the plants are are dormen down the stress factors are are really low and they have an entire
Winter to push out new Roots before the drought stress of Summer but in Fall we can’t get bare Roots so you’re limited to container availability um but we do carry a pretty good inventory of them the fall as well so volumetrically how much do you really
Want uh a mature as in 8 year to 10 year fully mature High Bush blueberry can produce maybe 15 to 20 pounds of fruit in its in its roughly 3- we production cycle that means for fresh eating you want maybe two plants per person who is a significant blueberry fan that gives
You some to eat and plenty to eat and some to to store or freeze if you’re serious about freezing uh or doing preserves or other types of processing with blueberries uh it’s worthwhile to double that maybe three or four plants per per blueberry eater in the
Household um keep in mind that they are big plants so that may be a limiting factor for you you really need to plant if you’re looking at high density planting like they do commercially you’re planting like four or five maybe six feet apart in rows eight or more
Feet apart in the home Garden people tend to plant them more in individually like 6 to8 feet separated on all all directions anything tighter than four or five you can’t physically walk between them when they’re full grown they are that big of a bush so allow plenty of
Space blueberries thrive in full sun environments they will tolerate a little bit of shade but it’s at the expense of production so uh they can make a transition zone plant if you you’ve got really some needing things like raspberries they need need a little bit less than that but they will produce
Better in full Sun they need access to irrigation watering is a significant limiting factor for growing blueberries and it’s not just in the early part of the season when we’re coming up to fruit production it’s even after Fruit Harvest because that’s when you you’re working on developing the buds for next year’s crop
So uh A good rule of thumb on irrigation is is two inches of water per week so that means you’re watering about twice as much as it takes to keep your lawn green that’s a pretty sign significant amount of water going on for blueberry Health they do require an acid soil
They’re very particular about that they don’t process nutrients appropriately if they if they lose too much aity they get too neutral or even alkalide their preferred range is between four and a half and five and a half on the pH scale um you can grow them at six without any
Major problems but you’re getting up around six and a half and you’re going to see that they you have trouble keeping them fed and productive most of our soils in this area are not that acidic so you’re going to probably need to take steps to make your soil more acidic we’ll talk about
That a little bit more in a moment so doing your planting you want to prepare a hole now this is a plant that you don’t want to get water log despite it wanting lots of water in the in the summer in the winter it would prefer reasonable drainage in
Addition we’re going to be mulching these on an ongoing and regular basis and mulching right up over the stems so it’s a really good idea to dig a pretty shallow hole hole you want to leave an inch or two of that root mass exposed above your above the top of your hole so
A shallow hole but two to three times the diameter of the root mass so on bare root plants that means you’re digging a hole maybe maybe 10 inches deep and maybe 25 inch across or so mix in plenty of compost plenty of organic material uh we like to use an
Acid planting mix um because it does two steps it helps us cifi soil provides good biomass for for for water and nutrient folding often that’s not enough in in its own self to produce enough acidic conditions for the blueberries you probably are going to need to do some
Degree of soil acidification at least at planting and pay some attention every few years as you go through uh that it’s not drifting too neutral over time we use Elemental sulfur because it’s the only organic Source we have for uh for acidifying the soil besides decomposition Cycles themselves um it takes time for
Acidification to happen so what we’re normally doing is we’re putting two to three ounces of sulfur per plant in the hole and when possible we would love to see that happening four or five months before you plant because it takes time it’s the the the um the chemical processes that
Happen to that sulfur is what causes the acidification rather than just the just dissolution of the sulfur itself so you can do it at planting that’s fine you can do it after planting just be aware that you might be struggling a little bit that first growing season getting
Enough nutrient uptake if your soil isn’t isn’t really good so yeah we’ll plant these plants in these acidified soils an inch or two exposed above the the root mass above the top and we’ll fill in with the soil that we’ve amended where we use the native soil and mix some compost in
Put a good layer of fertilizer in again we use an acidifying fertilizer usually um and a uh rening Comedia aelia food and organic Ro food does really really nice for blueberries and then you need to mulch them so for 2 inch shallow we’re going to mulch them about four inches over the
Top so we’re going to have the two inches of the top of the crown completely buried in m so it takes a pretty good amount of compost to get these in the ground now you’re used to seeing the blueberry orch around here and what do they do they use sawdust can
You do that sure sawdust and bark dust work fine for soil acidification um nutrient and moisture retention and um and weed suppression the characteristics we’re trying to accomplish here but they’re incredibly nitrogen negative the woodier the product is when you’re putting it down the longer it ties up
Nitrogen out of the soil so they do this commercially and then they feed very high nitrogen fertilizers on a regular basis to make up for it that’s a viable approach um for home garders who putting in three or four PL they do it because it’s cheap you can
Get saus cheaper than you can get compost you can get agricultural ammonia based fertilizers much cheaper than you get organic fertilizers with nitrogen um for the home Gardener i’ just assume see you do compost and roie food rather than um bark or or sawdust and high nitrogen synthetic fertilizers
So but either which is valid they’re just fine so blueberry care once you’ve got them in the ground will need to fertilize the ideal fertilization period process gives them an ongoing supply of nutrients through their flowering and into their fruiting season and also during their vegetative growth cycle that happens after the flower
Development so we like to to to feed them three times in lighter doses rather than one huge dose all at once so we feed either March April May or April May June is is suitable with an organic granular fertilizer um ideal fertilization process this is becomes critical if
You’re using Woody compost but it’s also not a bad idea even if if you’re using just just traditional bagged compost or broken down compost is to pull the top layer of mulch off put the fertilizer down and REM mulch Now using a finished compost that’s not such a big
Deal beneficial but not so critical but with Woody with Woody products like sawdust that is critical because where the nitrogen stealing is happening is right at that interface between the between the soil and the mulch so youve got to get that fertilizer down there where it can be
Used so there’s some labor involved in in doing this raking back compost feeding and raking it back over but it’s not horribly difficult to do once you get into a routine of doing it um it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your so pH so pH changes depending on
Biological processes and the amount of water and you’re running a lot of water through luies so if you’re starting to drift up into that six range um put another dose of sulfur on if you’re really good about feeding three Doses and mulching with something that’s already acidifying not something that’s
Been ph balanced um you may not have to do that that often but ultimately you’re keeping attention to it and you want to do it now blueberries can be in production for a very long period of time these are not blackberries and raspberries that age out pretty fast uh
Commercial they run a they run a planting for maybe maybe 20 years or so and then they dig those mature plants because the yield is starting to diminish and they sell them to home gardeners for another 20 to 30 years of decent production but declining uh so you have that potential
For a 30 40 or even 50y year production out of blueberries if they’re well cared for so it does make sense to pay attention to some of these these factors and make sure they’re staying healthy consistent watering is critically important so uh this is for yields but this is also for all overall
Plant health and for production the following year two inches a week during the dry season is is considered the standard um and that is a lot of water so be aware of that um measuring inches of water can be kind of complicated um there’s no better method I know with
With overhead irrigation than putting a tuna fish or a cat food can out there turning on your irrigation when you fill that that’s an inch of water so a wave action sprinkler that’s like an hour 45 minutes to an hour run time is an inch two inches a
Week best not to try to apply it all at one time do two or three applications over the course of the week we’re practical drip watering works for blueberries but you pretty much have to incorporate multiple drippers or or um or drip tubing that’s higher flow rates
Because you need to uh to put that water out over the entire root system that plant it’s a fibrous rooted plant with a fairly broad shallow root system so putting one or two individual drippers doesn’t do a really good job on blueberries they’re they’re better served with with collars of drippers or
Laser sober that actually has some spray to it um agriculturally they use drip tape where they Punch walls in it puts a higher volume water out that kind of thing but higher volume applications are better than super low volumes of application because it’s got to be dispersed and because what’s happening a
Foot and a half under the ground doesn’t really matter to blueberries they root down there the roots are all up in here weed control is very important in blueberries they don’t like the competition for water and nutrients so Hand weeding is the rule of thumb because you’re down there in the stems
With green tissue in the stems and leaf mass and herbicides are not at all practical for that application so keep them well weeded the mulching helps a lot not a cure all but it helps reduce the weed problems in the course of of taking care of your
Bushes you’re going to be doing some pruning we’ll talk about that in a moment and possibly some spraying um and you’re going to be doing the regular spring feeding somewhere in that cycle make sure you put a fresh dose of mulch over the plant so that
Mulch will do a couple of things it will keep a constant layer of active biological Mulch on top where holding nutrients holding water um it will suppress weeds to a reasonable degree big thing it does it suppresses diseases on the plant thritis it’s sitting there on the ground and blueberries get a fair
Number of diseases uh it’s well worth suppressing them that way in addition to or instead of spraying on a regular basis cleaning up at the end of the Harvest cycle is very important some of the more serious diseases like mummy Berry are best controlled not by spraying but by good sanitation and mulching
Practices so Critters creators love blueberries probably more than you do um they’re a real problems deer don’t bother the berries much but they love blueberry bushes and they eat them pretty heavily um you are probably going to need to protect them if you’re in Deer Country with a fence for the area
Or individual Nets over the bushes and they’re a big enough Bush that’s a little bit of a challenge to net well there are repellents out there for deer control they work so so if you keep on top of them they’re not perfect and you do have to keep on top of them because
They wear off but it is an option birds are the biggest problem in commercial blueberry operations you know you look at 40 acres of blueberries and they don’t fence them the deer get into them and browse them a little bit no big deal on that volume of plants but the
Deer but the birds are a disaster out there because they will eat all the fruit just before it’s ready to harvest typically just right as the brick SC is coming up so scare tape can work flash tape or other types of deterrence commercially they sometimes use
Acetylene cannons for the boom to SC to scare them away yeah me too but flicker tape is a fair approach you just can’t put it out too soon uh birds get used to it pretty fast so putting your flicker tape out by the time that you first start seeing Berry
Color on your berries gives you a reasonable chance of at least getting some of that fruit off before the birds get to it um other than that netting again is your is your approach vol and Gophers are a serious problem even in the commercial operations um because they eat and
Damage the root systems and the stems of the blueberry um Gophers are usually controlled by trapping you can usually if you’re keeping on top of it manage them that way vs are much harder to trap out the reproductive rate is so fast and the populations get so dense it’s really
Hard to just trap them out um I advocate strongly for using deterr and the best deterrence for uh for Bulls are keeping the weeds down everything in the in the Predator World eats Vols so they spend their entire life running under the grass under the low plant material um
Sometimes under the mulches to get to roots and Stems that they can eat so keeping uh weeds clear as much as possible in the area around your blueberries will detales from finding them encourage Raptor predation um here your Hawks and to some extent ows are huge rodent Predators for vs um they get
More VES than any other Predator out there uh if you look at the Anderson’s out there north of town um you notice he’s got these big poles out there with these big old dead branches mounted on them about 40 feet off the ground 30 feet off the ground something like that
Those are Raptor perches they’re encouraging hunting Raptors to sit there and wait and look for prey uh and that will help it’s not a cure all it will help short of that if populations get out of control you may have to Res resort to baiting and I don’t like
Having to bait for road control but um it will maybe come to the point where you either do that or you don’t erase blueberries in some situations um pests and diseases prevention is worth everything control is challenging unfortunately not all things can be completely prevented so we
Do sometimes resort to controls as well effective sanitation of fruit and leaf debris at the end of the season is very very important proper pruning is very very important it not only retires older wood it also uh tends to open out the the plant for air circulation reducing disease
Problems a fair number of the diseases uh there Leaf spots stem caners uh mummy Berry blights powdery mildew um there’s there’s quite a number of them that get into blueberries a lot of them can be suppressed or or moderated at least by uh by good mulching and good sanitation practices
It’s not a bad idea if you’re fighting some problems particularly with some of the caners and leaf blights that are a little more persistent um to resort to Copper fungicides pretty common approach for them just like you would in a fruit tree as a dormant season spray you can’t
Use copper mostly during the growing season because the berry the berry production it’s pretty hard on flowers it’s pretty hard on the berries themselves once we get past the flowering stage in the spring you do have the option of using uh organic fungicide serenade um or similar biological fungicides I seron is pretty
Well coming off the market we use moderate complete Disease Control these days so these are bacterial fungicides um they’re weak I wouldn’t really them in my entire um Disease Control regimen but you can use them through the growing season as needed or for improved control so blueberries get a number of
Minor pests um Leaf rollers or relatively minor um a leaf skeletonizer can be worse aphids mites watch for them control them as you would on any other plant the more modest insecticide the better insecticidal soaps mem pyin are all cital controls we have two significant INF fruit pests on blueberries we have the
The fruit worm cherry fruit worm and we have spotted Wing dropa the new introduced fruit fly so there’s one basic cycle on the on the fruit worm and unfortunately on blueberries that’s right at the end of flour so you have to focus your controls right at the end of
Flour after the bees are down or doing evening applications when the bees are not flying um spinoid or BT are organic insecticides that are very effective for controlling these moth and fly alarm um spot Wier sof is a little more difficult it’s a multi fruit pest it
Affects a wide range of different fruits uh it has a very long cycle because there’s many many generations per year on blueberries they tend to come in just at hint of color before the full sugar develops um so if you’re having ongoing problems with this fruit fly you need to
Time your sprays according to that which means different varieties will have slightly different spray schedules and if you’re doing a mixed Orchard you might be starting to spray in June for them and continuing to spray through August or September every couple of weeks for good suppression so um it’s a problem uh it
Does quite a bit of damage to the crop and uh it’s sporadic you’ll see them some people have a lot of problem with it in the area others have very little problem with it but it is a is a flying pest so it’s likely to spread around
More uh and it’s become a real disaster in commercial Orchards as well as home gardening last decade or so pruning blueberries is probably what we get the most questions about that’s kind of a somewhat complicated topic once you get into a rhythm on it um it’s not difficult to
Do um but it does require a little bit of eye to it um why are we pruning well couple of things are happening first of all we need new refreshed growth for productivity so um what happens on an older stem once you get beyond that four
Or five years old um it’s not like they stop producing it’s like they overproduce they start putting more and more berries on that old stem and very few leaves to the point where they start straining or stressing the plants production ability so we retire those older branches to promote new growth coming
Out that can be can maintain productivity we’re also trying to get rid of obviously diseased cankered damaged broken wood and we’re trying to open up for air circulation and Light penetration for better ripening and for disease reduction pruning on blueberries is done during the dormant season usually about
The time the buds are swelling so again now January February is real normal um you should be done by the 1 of March with with any blueberry pruning that’s kind of pushing the late end of of pruning on blueberries so the best productivity is
On on um is off of oneyear Old Wood and then and the growth that came off of that the previous season but they maintain good productivity out to about four to maybe five year old so when we’re looking at a young Bush all we’re literally doing is taking a one or two
Old stems out to encourage plenty of New Growth to come out to replace a good rule of thumb is to have have maybe um two or three viable good healthy younger branches per year of age so if you look at like a two-year-old blueberry plant the one gallon container is usually a
Two-year-old blueberry plant um at this time of year you might take a branch out or two at most you need to be feeding watering and mulching enough that you’re getting lots of growth to select from in the subsequent years if you’re doing marginal care and you go through and you
Try to remove two or three or four stems on a four-year-old Bush you have nothing left because they’re not putting out enough New Growth so there should be new growth coming out from ground level multiple stems coming out um so as you get to like a four-year-old Bush you’re removing two
Or three of the oldest stems and that’s a point in time where the printing starts really getting significant um 4-year-old plant you want to have eight or 10 production stems and nothing else you want to be slowly increasing that stem count a little bit as you get
Older and older from there but still cycling out the oldest stems so by time you’re at a 10 to 15 year Peak production plant you might have maybe 15 or 20 stems and you should have nothing older than four or at most 5 years so it’s this constant Rejuvenation pruning
So process first of all getting in there look at the bush take out any visibly broken diseased damaged otherwise nonviable branches you’ll notice that besides having some really robust growth coming out from ground level you’ll also have some wispy stuff either low branching off of those uprights or coming out from
Ground level but it’s it’s little stuff it’s it’s less than your pinky in diameter or even less than a pencil in diameter stuff like that you could thin out to help open out um so small small un branchy stuff down low branches that on on the main production canes are
Getting long enough that when they have fruit load they might actually droop down and onto the ground or or into the aisle where they’re no longer their risk of breakage from just maintaining the plants could also be be cut out then go through an age age your stems that you
Have left and figure out what you need to take out from oldest wood if you’re keeping if you’ve been working this bush for a while you’ve probably got a pretty good idea what stems are what um when the stems begin to bark so stems are very clean and glossy year one and two
By three they start developing a little bit down low by four they’re starting to bark well up by five or more you’ve got a lot of bark on the stems anything that’s significantly Barky is old enough to to be a candidate for removal so uh once you’ve got always when you’re
Doing that try to keep an eye towards air circulation you might you might find that you have several options of PL of stems to leave or take always focus on opening out the center so you’re developing kind of this open vasy shape overall on the bush after you’ve done
Removing your aged canes do any additional pruning of younger canes that bring us down to a proportional ratio and help open that Center out so ideally I say at at at 10 to 15 years maybe 15 16 17 canes varying in age from one to four or maybe five years old and roughly
Proportionally distributed over those ages that’s what you’re going for um it’s harder to uh Express verbally sometimes than it is to Simply do and there are great diagrams online for doing this but um you see our we’ve did a even a little YouTube video on it as
Well it’s worth perusing but the key here is the is the refreshing growth that’s very important so harvesting of blueberries um is a learned uh learned thing blueberries producing clusters the cluster does not ripen uniformly so uh you’ll get up there and you’re working these berries and some
Are coming off and some are not with a little practice but you’ll get used to grabbing a whole cluster of berry and just kind of rolling rolling with your fingers and thumbs right berries that are really ripe will detach under just a light pressure you should not be pulling berries off Bush pulling
Berries off Bush are not ripe yet or they have a disease that’s preventing Detachment um it’s a it’s a physically learned skill it’s not too difficult once you get into it you want to go through and pick those blueberries a couple of times a week during their two
Or three times a week during their production cycle so that you don’t have berries that are overaging out and they you can maximize your yield um once you’ve best to pick during the cool parts of the day they get softer and softer as the as the weather heats up that happens particularly on
The later varieties when it’s really hot um and to get them into refrigerated storage quickly or freeze them but they don’t hold at room temperature for very long that’s the keys for for for preserving them so that’s what we had for a basic blueberry presentation for you today and
I would be happy to take questions either from the room or from uh from the online guests uh with the audio in here for my online people it might be better for you to type it in the chat but I’m also willing to listen so any questions
So to make a hydr it may sound silly when you want to create a new variety you’re taking the pollen from one to the other and then you’re taking the seeds out of that and putting it in the ground to make a new plant correct grapping anything on to something no that’s
Correct so when when we’re when they talking when we talk about them developing new blueberry varieties it is a sexual breeding process where you’re transferring pollen from one variety from a male plant to to the ovary of a female plant um marking usually protecting the the flower and or letting
The fruit develop out then um letting the been planting the seed and developing up from seed a new plant and four years or five years after that you might have your first bar significant amount of berries to see if this is a desirable cross because they are
Sexually reproduced you would do a lot of them or you would even let them open pollinate save some fruit and plant those out and see what you get a lot of blueberry production has not necessarily been heavily intentional crosses but are accidental crosses or open pollinate
Crosses that have to they fruit them out they they let them develop desirable characteristics but when you’re going for specifics like some of those inter specific crosses things like that yeah control pollination select the fruit plant the seeds see what you get in a few years from now
This is why introduction new varieties is such a complex thing in fruit in Fruit world too um there’s no shortcuts to this and like apple trees or whatever yes you get a a Seedling from that CFT and then you graph that seedling onto something with an older root system so
You can speed up the process but you might not know what you got for six or seven or eight years or more if it’s going to even be worth for you know following up with so can be can be a process yes I have two questions um what’s the technique on um adding
Sulfur so um sulfur is normally uh for best best results it’s lightly incorporated into the soil surface or mulch surface that you’re trying to acidify um there’s a reaction process that needs to happen and that takes the acidification in that layer working slowly down um burying it deep doesn’t
Do any good and putting it just on top doesn’t do any good needs to be lightly Incorporated okay and then the question would be so when you mulch should you pull all the old mulch every year and then have all new mulch or should you continue adding year after year so the
Question is um with mulching are we going to uh strip the old mulch out and refresh or are we just going to add on top you simply add on top uh it decomposes over time anyway if you look at the Orchards when they’re using saus which of course slower to break down and
They don’t necessarily mulch every year though some of them do um they’ve got these piles of sawdust with these crowns coming out of them so they’re you know they’re burying those crowns quite a ways down blueberries don’t resent that as long as the soil drains but you want to keep adding more
On top you don’t want to take the old away but in order to do the sulfur then you need to do that for the fertilization you really if you’re using Woody product you need to really get underneath it so you rake it back but then you rake it back over again so what
Happens um I’m going to take just a bit more on this question specifically what happens with fertilization and decomposition Cycles so you got um let’s say you put an organic Mulch on a compost mulch that’s got a little bit of Woody material in it and the bacterial
Organisms in the soil that are finishing breaking that down to where it’s no longer compost it’s soil um they reproduce to meet their food supply and to reproduce they take nitrogen out of the soil surrounding right so um one of the worst possible things you can do in
Any mulching situation this incl putting leaf mulch on your vegetable garden is put a protective Mulch on let biology start happening and then take that mulch away and throw it away because now you’re taking all that nitrogen that was utilized and you’re getting rid of it um with natural decomposition Cycles they
Go through boom and bust Cycles but as those organisms that are breaking down that material age out and die off they return that nitr into soil it’s not gone it’s locked in a biological cycle so leaving it there to be released as as the as the natural mortality happens is
The ideal and for for sulfuring you can be under but you don’t necessarily be need to or want to be right in contact with the roots um you can be right in that upper layer of mulch is fine for sulfuring or you can do it as part of
Your feeding cycle while while you’re in between I normally don’t rake my mulch all the way out to like bar root bar root the tops we’re just trying to get down to that layer where the fertilizers can do something good and then how about adding coffee grounds so coffee grounds
Coffee grounds can be an attitude if you can get enough coffee grounds to keep your plants happy I’m happy for you but that takes a lot of coffee grounds coffee grounds um are significantly acidic and they have some nutrient value um so not a bad Approach at all but
Usually in supplementation to other feeding methods yeah got a question online okay so older established plants and you want to cut out Barky canes and leave up to 10 to 15 correct is this will force new canes that will grow up and branching that is exactly the idea
With an older established plant um you you want to selectively remove the oldest stems which usually means if you’ve been maintaining this plant going ongoing you’re taking out three or four maybe five branches or so of the oldest branches out that removal of those old branches coupled with good fertilization
And watering will encourage a lot of vigorous growth coming out giving you good material to work from next year that’s absolutely correct all right anybody have anything else for me so in commercial Orchards there’s a wide range of herbicides and sprays as far as I understand I’m thinking that
Blueberries are kind of up there in terms of what they consider the when you want to call Dirty guys or something in terms of what they might use on the P so talk about relative degrees question is about um how much commercially how much how much product is used pesticide
Products in particular um on blueberries there’s a fair amount but compared to other Orchard props I would not say it’s excessive uh I mean I worry more about a lot like apple production unless you’re intentionally organic they actually spray them more than they do blueberries typically um herbicide use yeah that is
Done quite a bit um most for the most part there’s um there’s actually a fairly limited amount being done on blueberries as far as serious pesticides you know malathion guon these products yes there’s some that’s really more gone by the way I think even commercially uh than it has in in tree orchard
Production uh there’s a lot of use of pyth roids and neem even in commercial production and various forms of spinosin is very effective for the particular pests they get uh so spinosin insecticides are uh okay so if you look at BT it’s a bacteria um it as it gets
Inside the host body of the insect it produces it gives off bacterial protein toxins and that’s what kills the bug is the bacteria living inside the bug reproducing and giving off these toxins um spinoid is a is those protein toxins um produced through the process of sugarcane fermentation so you’re just
Simply introducing the bacterial toxin directly to the insect so it’s a little more stable than BT itself got a little more duration um neither of these are particularly bee friendly they don’t kill bees that are foraging but if they get if you get enough of it during
Pollen and nectar Gathering it goes back to the hive this is both BT and spinoid um and you can actually have a pretty significant impact on hive health because they kill laral insects that’s what they do the good news is once we’re outside of flowering cycle there’s probably
Nothing else in the immediate vicinity of your blueberry that’s flowering we technically keep them pretty clean um and these insecticides are very safe in a relative sense they’re they’re organic insecticides from a biological base uh so spids are getting quite a bit of use now agriculturally as well as in the
Home Garden um with good reason but um yeah I mean they do get a fair amount of product they get a lot of fertilizer they they feed them a lot of ammonia synthetic fertilizer a lot of ammonia based fertilizers ammonium sulfate um for the acidification and the high
Nitrogen load and that bothers me probably more than most of the spraying they’re doing although you do see Orchards still using malathion for fruitworm and that that can be a problem absolutely question online do you need to prune out uh any little stuff up the canes if it’s
Not damaged or diseased or will the plant maintain a good balance of leaf and fruit buds um that is kind of situational um so you will certainly see uh on a typical mature Bush that there’s a lot of fringy little growth uh that is a good candidate for
Removal because it’s not in a viable production it’s either trapped in the interior it’s so spindly it really support much production those kinds of things so some degree of cleanup for opening it is definitely desirable um other than that we don’t spend a lot of time like clear limming them for a clear
Trunk no but um opening out the centers and taking all the little whispy stuff that’s not viable production wood is is worth doing absolutely all right well I think we’ll call it a day on the class I’m still here all day if anybody has any follow-up questions so let me know appre
Appreciate everybody coming and thank you very much