Unfortunately it’s not all about picking berries. Blueberry bushes, like all perennial fruit and berries require maintenance from time to time. This growing great blueberry segment focuses on pruning, fertility, and weeding in the blueberry patch. It’s not glamorous but this is the hard work that makes picking delicious berries so enjoyable!
Pruning
People get overwhelmed by the thought of pruning. Whether it’s blueberries or fruit trees pruning is beneficial to the plant. Annual pruning will help keep your blueberries productive and healthy.
It’s good practice to prune your Blueberries while they are dormant. Plants should have stems of various ages and vigor. Plants with 4-6 stems are ideal. Too many stems will crowd each other out by competing for the same sun and nutrition. This translates into few berries and higher pest pressures.
Old blueberry stems lose production capabilities after a certain age and young stems don’t produce much either. The trick is to find a mix between mature producing branches and the young shoots that will eventually replace them. Prune out stems that are over an inch in diameter and/or over 6 years old. Prune out most of the young shoots, leaving one or two to renew the plant in the coming years.
Stems ages 2-6 are ideal for fruit production. Constantly removing old branches and managing the younger branches is the only way to keep berry production high.
Fertility
Blueberries like all plants are most productive when they have the right nutrition and nutrients. Unfortunately there is no one thing that every blueberry grower can add to their plants to achieve perfect fertility.
Soil tests done once or twice a year will identify what your soil can benefit from in relation to your blueberry plants. My go to blueberry fertility has been a twice annual application of worm casting each spring and fall.
Every location is different so check your soil to see what your plants need to be the most productive for you. Berry growers in my region can do pretty good with a biannual application or work castings or compost.
Weed Control
The demise of many a blueberry bush has come from weeds. At first they are barely noticeable but after a month or two you can barely see the plant. Going out the following spring you might not even be able to locate your plants.
I know how quick this can happen from first hand experience! I have left unattended plants get overcome by weeds and nearly choked out all together. Even worse is when I didn’t see a few smaller bushes in the weeds and mowed them over entirely. I have learned my lesson these days. And have come up with a better weeding plan.
Weeding a few blueberries is a pretty quick task but the more plants you have the more it pays to stay on top of the weeding from the start. Clearing the immediate planting area ahead of time is crucial. This can be done several different ways. Two of my favorites are sheet mulch and solarizing. Check out my article on them for more info.
Once the planting area is clear of weeds let’s keep it that way by using weed free mulches. Wood chips and shredded leaves are favorites of mine. Adding in the fall allows them to break down slowly over the winter, gives a bit of fertility as well as keeping back weeds. Depending on weed pressure a spring application of mulch might be necessary as well.
Have a blueberry question we haven’t touched on yet? Leave a comment or email us and we will feature in the next segment of growing great blueberries!