Blueberries Plants
Do Not Let Them Fruit The First Year!
Blueberries plants need to be established before you allow them to bear fruit. In the spring, promote root and vegetative maturity by taking out all flower clusters. On the second year, allow a few flower clusters to remain so that you can have some fruit in the third year. In their fourth or fifth year, your blueberries plants may have a full crop.
Container Blueberries Plants
- Select containers that will provide the blueberries plants room for growth. For the small bushes, you can start with two-gallon containers.
- Mix a part of peat moss to one part of acidic potting soil, one part well-rotted compost, and some granular sulfur. Moisten the mixture and place in containers. Do not fertilize at planting, but do irrigate well. Check for good drainage.
- Irrigate heavily during the first two weeks of planting in the container. Irrigate thereafter as needed. Do not let the soil dry out. It needs to be kept moist.
- Container blueberries plant need at least six weeks of cold temperature, about 36° F or less each year.
- Place the containers in a sunny location. If you have too, have a mobile platform to make sure the blueberries plants have all the sun they need.
- Must be repotted each spring
Fertilizing the Blueberries Plants
- Your blueberries plants require more fertililzer as they become more mature.
- For the first planting year, apply in the early spring one ounce of 10-10-10 complete fertilizer, or half an ounce of ammonium sulfate. It is one or the other; do not use both.
- Six weeks later, apply another ounce or the complete fertilizer or another half an ounce of ammonium sulfate.
- If you are using the complete fertilizer, double the dosage for every succeeding planting year, i.e., two ounces in the early spring for the second year, repeated after six weeks; three ounces for the third year, etc.
- If you are using the ammonium sulfate, increase it just by a quarter of an ounce in the early spring during the second year of planting, thereby increasing by half an ounce for the succeeding years.
- Bloodmeal and well-composted manure are also good. Never use raw manure.
- Always irrigate thoroughly after feritlization.
Pruning the Blueberries Plants
If you want high yields of quality blueberries, you need to prune your plants every year. Remember that most fruit grows on healthy one-year-old shoots on vigorous two-to-five-year old canes. The fruits buds on those shoots will have a cluster of five to eight blooms. The vegetative buds, of course, will produce leaves. All blueberries plants should be pruned while they are fully dormant, which means January through March. An established blueberries plant should have about six to ten one-to-six-year-old canes.
- For every bush, leave about seven healthy two-to-five-year-old canes and two to three one-year-old canes.
- Inspect your blueberries plants carefully and remove all low-growing, weak-fruiting, and diseased canes.
- If your plants are less than three years old, you only need to remove the dead branches and weak growths.
- If they are six or more years old, prune them all to ground level in favor of the more productive, younger canes. If new cane growth has been slow, leave about four to eight inches of stub above ground. Hopefully, new canes will sprout from them.
- Thin the other canes and leave only those that have long (at least three inches), thick branches bearing good fruit buds.
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