Before you prune, you have to decide if you are pruning for aesthetics, or if you want to achieve maximum fruit production. Its your shrub, in your yard, so you get to decide. If aesthetics is the goal, then you might remove spindly new growth, that is parallel to older, established wood. I have never removed more than 10% of the canes in a given year. On the other hand, if you are looking to get the most fruit, then you will need to open up the base, removing some of the oldest growth, even if it looks perfectly healthy. New growth gets to stay, and if a new shoot juts off at an odd angle, thats OK, because it will be able to collect more sunlight. Blueberry shrubs that are pruned for maximum fruit have a disheveled, jangled look, in my opinion. Regardless of which method you choose, the shrubs seem to respond well to pruning. I like to prune in March, as soon as the snow melts.

Look at your plants this summer- which of the branches are loaded with fruit and which are thinly fruited? Young branches will be more fruitful than the older ones once a plant reaches maturity so you begin to cycle out older branches in favor of young ones when pruning mature plants.

With younger plants you generally just prune out weaker druping branches although you may decide to thin some productive branches just to provide more light to the remaining ones. There is no clear formula I know of that clearly guides one to the ideal level openess for blueberries.

Is it true that blueberries take 3 years to produce a good crop of berries.

There was a thread here about blueberry fertilizing where a gentleman produced substantial plants in a single season by starting them in 3 gal. pots in a 50-50 mix pine bark and peat. He used a slow release fertilizer by Florikan and watered them every day and after a single season had large enough plants to produce a good crop, apparently (he provided very impressive photos). He had gotten as far as planting them in the ground on the second season and plants certainly looked large enough to produce well.

The general rule is 3 years at best for a significant crop and often 4. And that is for well cared for plants that get enough water in the right soil. It also means pinching off flowers for at least the first 2 years.

I have 3 token blueberry bushes (all different varieties) that are on the vineyard drip system (daily water) in containers, and I did not realize that they fruit on new wood, or that they needed to be pruned. This is my second year, and there are a few berries on 2 bushes. One has zero berries.

I certainly don't allow my grapes to bear fruit for 3 or 4 years, and it surprises me that you shouldn't let blueberries fruit either! I ate one ripe one, and it was HUGE and very tasty! It is hard to be patient! I'm grateful figs and pomegranates can fruit in a year!

Thanks for the good pruning advice! I'll be pruning for fruit, not beauty! It doesn't snow here, so I'll prune the blues when we prune the grapevines.
Suzi

I checked out a DVD from my local library. It was about a ten minute demo on how to prune a blueberry bush. The video was easier to understand than most of the instruction guides I read. The video was called "A grower's guide to pruning highbush blueberries" and was put out by Oregon State University.