Wow, those look fantastic!!!

A few of mine from pics I took a month ago.

1. Reka

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2. Darrow

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3. Chandler

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4. Jersey

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5. Northcountry

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Sweet plants riverman! Its cool how different your northern plants look compaired to mine. One question, in those big pots do you ever change out the soil? If so how often?

Great looking plants guys!!

Sweetcrisp 17 months ago.

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Sweetcrisp one year later.

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The same plant today, 5 months later, after potting up from 5 to 12 gallon.

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New Sweetcrisp bought as very small plants in June.

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My primary question about these plants is will they bear any fruit next year growing this fast?

Blueboy,

I once had seven Gulfcoast and over time that has been reduced to just one. That plant variety is just very prone to stem blight unfortunately. I only lost one to the blight but they would always get it and finally just ripped all but the one out.

One of the 20 or so sweetcrisps planted last October and pruned down to a foot high.

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The plant today. The tallest canes are over 6 feet tall on the plant.

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This is a picture of part of the sunshineblue hedge (9 plants total) in the front of the house. These plants were just 10 inches tall when planted spring of 2010. There is a row of pineapples behind them tucked in right next to the house.

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Some nice plants FN.

That's amazing you can grow pineapple. Way too cold for that here in eastern Washington, we mostly grow wheat, barley, and grapes in this valley. Wineries are real popular here. There is also some of the largest apple orchards in the country here, cherries, onions, asparagus, etc. We have a long growing season here, starts in May and goes through mid October or so. Our summers are very hot and the days long because of our Northern location. Winters are cold but not brutal like the midwest. We typically get a few weeks of snow and a couple weeks of temps near zero but otherwise the temps stay in the 20s, 30s, 40s.This morning it was 38F when I got up so any day now we will have the first frost of the year. Supposed to be a high of 70 today but that will very soon change. Everything still green now but in three weeks the leaves will be dropping like crazy.

Thanks for sharing.

RM

98 here today with a low of 75. Though it is supposed to cool off over the weekend to more seasonable temps with lows in the 60's and highs in the 80's. We do get a couple frosts most years and sometimes a few hours down to 25 or so. Those days the pineapples have to be covered of course.

Wonderful looking plants guys.Isn't the Bountiful Blue a gorgeous plant blueboy?I picked two up today for $12.50 each,normally $35.The Darrow blueberry is my favorite tasting berry so far that I grow,although I tried some Sunshine blueberries at a nursery and liked them very much.And fruitnut and bamboo rabbit,I can only hope my Sweetcrisps get like yours.Brady
Thanks fruitnut, I finally got it!

Bountiful Blue just bought today

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Chippewa

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Sunshine Blues planted about two weeks ago

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Three Tophats in a pot

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Blueberry Row

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The Spartan didn't like to undress for the camera

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But I twisted his branch a little :)

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They look great Brady! Super healthy plants.

RM

I like the fruit of the sunshine blue but the fruit has to stay on the plant for a couple weeks after it turns blue to get good.

Can't wait for spring for the sweetcrisps to give me their first crop. The following year the plants should be pretty big. It still amazes me how fast the plants grow here compared to when I grew them up north.

Ive only got to eat 2 sunshine blueberries and they were quiet tasty. I only left around 10 berries on my plant when I planted it and my son ate most of them! Cant wait till next spring to see how my plants turn out. If it all goes my way I should have a couple gallons of blueberries and Kiowa blackberries.

Brady your plants are sweet dude;) and yes the Bountifuls are stunning, they really stand out! I tasted some of its berries and really couldnt tell much differance between it and Sunshine other than Bountifuls berries were much bigger. Im going to try and propigate both next spring.

Question, should I prune this plant way back right now, wait till Feb to do it, or just not worry about cutting it way back at all and just do some tip prunning in the spring? This is the 2 year old Southmoon I just got and potted it up to 10 gallons. I did rough the root ball up and made 4 slices 1 inch deep on four sides. It was pretty much in a knot when I pulled it out of the pot. I havent ever done this in the fall and not quiet sure which route to take. What would you do?

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If it was my plant I would cut the top back some, perhaps 1/4 and get rid of that scraggly growth at the bottom.

All of your plants look way better than mine, but I am still a newbie at blueberry's. It is rocky where I am and keeping them watered can sometimes be a challenge.

Riverman, I am curious as to where you are. I get the occasional -20 temp and things above ground die, so how do you keep the ones in the whiskey barrels alive, do you wrap them?

Have any of you had luck propagating these? I would like to try that in the spring, cause I hate to spend $20 on a plant that I kill so easily.

I have blueberry envy after looking at your pictures.

I just finished taking cuttings from my blueberries, treating them with growth hormone and potting them up. I've placed the pots in a large plastic container with containers of water to keep the humidity high. I'll remove the lid for an hour per week and check on them. If this works I'll need to buy a camera so I to can post pictures.
Dan

Spogarden.........I'm guessing from your username you are in Spokane? I'm in Walla Walla.......

To answer your question, I just leave them in the pots, they freeze solid every winter and every spring they come out just fine. I have never lost one to winter kill. Last winter we had zero for a couple weeks and still they were fine. I do add about 6 inches of leaves around the base of them and I kind of push the leaves down to compress them but still the soil freezes solid. This fall I am moving all my plants into the ground, the pots work fine but I find it easier to care for them in the ground.

If I were growing in spokane I would grow them in the ground for sure to protect them in Winter. You are quite a bit colder up there than here. Dig a hole about 3' in diamter and a foot deep and fill it with pine bark and peat and a little soil and then top dress every year with more mulch and I bet your plants will do fine. Lots of free pine needles around you up there.

RM

Blueboy, I see that you're in the Houston area too. How are you watering your blueberries? Mine look so so sad and I'm pretty sure it's the chlorinated, alkaline tapwater driving the PH up in my blueberry bed. Do you acidify your water every time you water them? Or do you have a really large rain barrel or something? I keep hoping for some rain to give them a good soaking, but as you know, no luck...

Julia42, I did use tapwater for the first 4 months and I would fill my 55 gallon drums with tapwater and let them sit outside uncovered for a couple of days. Then I would add 1.4oz of sulfuric acid to each drum and that would bring my ph down to 4.8 to 5.2. I used that untill we got some rain in July and have been using rain water everysince. My plants grew fine using acidified tapwater but be carefull using acidified water in raised beds like mine. I add sulfer to my mix plus fertilized with acid fertilizer and watered with acid water. After 5 months of this I dropped the Ph down to 3 in most of my beds. If I did it again I would use the acidified water for 2 months or so untill the sulfer started kicking in. Once the sulfer kicked in you could probably use tap water with out effecting the ph to terriably bad. I would still suggest using the acidified water if ph starts to climb after a couple months of tap water. I think you would just have to stay on top of the ph of your soil for awhile untill you can establish some kind of pattern. Now having said that, my potted plants had higher readings. The reason I believe this happend is because the pots actually get flushed when watering and the acid cant accumulate like it does in my raised beds sitting on clay soil. So for the pots, if u dont want to use sulfer I think u could get away with just using acidified water and be just fine as long as some water comes out of the bottom of the pot everytime after watering to flush alittle out each time. When watering pots like this the nitrogen will get flushed as well so stay on top of the fertilizers. I watered daily during our summer heatwave.

Some pics of my blueberries. 7 established plants from left to right: Atlantic, Herbert, Chandler, Jersey, Blue Jay, Duke and Legacy. Who can guess which ones were bare root 3 years ago and which were bought big and potted?
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3 new bare root plants from Nourse this spring: {{gwi:124510}}From blueberries

3 plants as of today. I pulled all flowers off this year and will do so again next year: {{gwi:124511}}From blueberries

Nice looking plants Sharppa, mine are turning pretty purple and red too. Fall is definitely here now.

RM