blueboy:

Why not leave them and see if they make decent fruit. My guess is they'll not get very sweet. You'll get plenty of bloom on Emerald next spring and your plants will likely remain largely evergreen. That and some new leaves next spring should provide enough leaves for early and late bloom.

Some varieties like Southmoon and probably Emerald usually have a few fall and winter flowers pruned or not.

Were they all normal bloom or were some like the mixed bloom/vegetative shoots I posted recently?

I think its the mixed bloom/vegetative shoots. The shoots are growing and leafing like a branch but every leaf node has a flower sprouting out of it. Now I just planted these this past spring and this was a 2 year old potted plant when put in my raised bed. Will this plant be considered a 3 year blueberry plant next year or 2 years old because it was taken out of the pot, roots sliced on 4 sides and replanted?

I have a northcountry or a northblue (I don't remember which it is) that is doing the same. Being in Texas you might be ok leaving them Blueboy.

I keep pulling them off of my plant because I want the plant to save the energy for next spring. We only have maybe 30 days until frost starts hitting here so my plants really need to start going to sleep...........zzzzzzz.

I am so not looking forward to winter. I read the other day that La Nina is setting up again and they are predicting another hard and wet winter for the Northwest. Last winter started with near zero temps for us in November and it didnt' start getting nice until June!

RM

blueboy:

Age doesn't matter much with regard to fruiting and blossom removal. It's more about plant size and leaf area vs number of fruit. On any age plant it's always OK to remove some fruit/blossoms to increase fruit quality. The easiest way to remove some of the fruit is to clip off tips of the small wood that on Emerald will be covered with blossoms next spring. Also take out overly thick small or medium size wood.

Could you post a picture of your blossoms?

I will post some pics but its gona have to be tomarrow due to me being at work today and my computer at home has been ransacked my 2 yearold son. Having a bad day work today! Im trying to quit dipping Copenhagen and its probably the hardest thing Ive ever had to do. This is day 1, I got along ways to go!!!!!!!

I have given up letting the fall flowers mature. Have yet to get any decent berries from them which is a shame. Now I just prune them off and as fruitnut said pruning off some of the buds during the winter is a very good idea. It is better for the plant and the remaining fruit will be bigger and sweeter. It is especially important on the highly productive plants..it is one of the reasons I like the sweetcrisps as they don't over produce fruit.

bamboo:

Hey man we think alike. I'd rather have a modest yield of superb fruit on Sweetcrisp than worrying about there being too much fruit on Emerald or Jewel. And no matter how much you thin those productive varieties the fruit still won't come close to Sweetcrisp.

I think to get good fall berries they'd need to flower in July. This is just too late.

This is a picture taken today,09/24/2011 of some flowers on a Chippewa.

I'm still working on getting a photo to post here.I followed fruitnut's instructions,(HTML code in Photobucket,right?)but could only left click,which looks like it copied okay.After doing that and the rest of the steps,the photo appeared but it was rejected because of no or incorrect URL for photo.Brady

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:123786}}

Brady:

The HTML code goes right here not down below where you can paste in a URL link. Right now if I wanted to post a picture I'd hit enter several times, click back up to the end of the text, arrow down, left click, and paste in the HTML.

Your picture above does work and saves space. The picture shows a mixed flower/vegetative shoot. Nice Job!!!

Well, so much for posting my pics. Got home and took some pics last night and was excited to post some pics of my plants today. I was going to post the fall flower pics + some planting to now pics of my plants but got to work this morning and our computers dont have a drive to insert the little memory disks. What a bummer man!!!!

One more question, to reward my self for not dipping yesterday for the first time in 15 years I went bought a Southmoon BB Plant. Its definatly a 2 year old plant this year cause the base is at least 1 inch in diameter and its got alot of canes up to about 4ft tall. Its in what looks to be a 1 gallon pot. They had put some fertilizer on it to green it up alittle bit but I dumped out the fert and just put a couple hand fulls of fresh peatmoss on it cause all the roots were exposed at the top of the pot. Should I just leave it in that pot untill spring or go ahead and pot it up to 10 or 15 gallons and trim the top way back? I dont want it to put on any more growth untill spring time and Im affraid of doing anything that might provoke that.

Blueboy,

Congratulations on day 1....it will get harder but easier in time if it is anything like cigarettes.

Where are you located? I have a few southmoon they are ok. 4 feet tall and a 1 gallon pot? Ouch....that plant is going to be root bound something fierce. For most plants jumping from a 1 gallon pot to a 10 gallon would be a death sentence but BB don't seem to care at all. You have to be in a fairly warm zone to grow southmoon and because of that I think you can repot it now. If the plant is horribly rootbound you will have to do something about that.

What "soil" are you going to pot the plant in to?

I think Im going to with the 5-1-1 mix or something close to it. I got the peat, perilite, and pine bark mulch but I also have a few bags of a blueberry mix from Natures Way Resources here in the Houston area. I will post a link so you can check it out and tell me what you think. I have 6 raised beds that I filled 1-1-1 with pine bark mulch, peat moss and this blueberry mix. My plants have done very well so far in the raised beds. I did have to flush them once or twice due to low ph issues but the rabbit eyes were cut back to 1ft at planting and are now well over five feet after beeing tipped back twice this summer. The SHB in the raised beds cut back to 1ft at planting are now 3ft to 4ft tall after tipping back twice during the summer also. I may try this blueberry mix with some pine bark and perilite. Tell my your thoughts!

Just scroll down on this page untill you get to BlueBerry Mix
http://www.natureswayresources.com/products.htm

Blueboy,

Use the same mix you did last time, good grief your plants are growing like weeds! You can't get better growth than what you have had. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

I have never understood the whole plant related to the correct pot size thing, can someone explain this to me? When I first planted my little blueberries in pots three years ago they went straight into wine barrels and they wer only a foot tall. They grew fantastic.

RM

Blueboy,

I have zero experience growing blueberries in pots. Some of the commercial BB growers here do grow the plants in 25 gallon pots and the plants are huge, healthy and very productive. The only thing they use is 100% pinebark in the pots. They do add pelleted sulfur twice a year.

While I don't grow in pots I don't grow in the native sugar sand here either. I mix pine bark with peat 2-1 and add sulfur. It works perfect for me.

Riverman,

The pot size thing is easy to understand. You add a small plant to a large pot and you have a lot of wet soil surrounding those roots. In the ground the water would wick away but in a pot you are just asking for rot problems. Some plants also just do better when their roots are contained. For BB this rule does not seem to apply and they seem to enjoy being over potted.

If your mix drains well enough then the pot can't be too big for good growth. But sometimes people are prone to overwater small plants in big pots. Combine that with poorly draining soil and you'll get dead plants.

Ok.....yea that makes sense. Thanks.

RM

Finally got to up load my photos today;) Here are some pics of the fall flowers Im seeing on my plants and some mixed flower vegetative shoots.

{{gwi:123791}}

{{gwi:123792}}

{{gwi:123793}}

{{gwi:123794}}

Great pictures. I was talking with my friend with the blueberry field today about plants that bloom in the fall and he said it's fairly common.

RM