Not here. They are getting buds though.

Some of my Sunshine Blues are getting ready to bloom in Orlando. I expect to have a couple of flowers any day now. I have about 10 but only two have well developed buds yet.

I'll have to see if these blossoms actually develop into fruit or maybe just drop off. Let me know how yours do Thomas and you, too, Amerroses.

Hi Bluesky
I have two new plants that have buds now, too.

I read (Organic Gardening, I think) that you shouldn't let them fruit the first year so the plants could get stronger. Do any of you guys cut off your first flowers?

I got an Emerald from Lowe's this summer when they were $5 and a Primadonna in March for my birthday. They both have just a few little buds and I'm growing them in big pots.

I wonder if it's good advice to wait a year to let them produce their fruit (?_) What do you think?

Susie

I received that advice too but I did not follow it. I do think it is good advice. If you pinch the fruit off the first year they will devote their energy to growth and produce more fruit the second year. HOWEVER, it was my first year growing blueberries and there was no way I was going to forgo the pleasure of eating fruit for two years! My blueberry is now doing fine and is on year three now. The sky did not fall. I think you should decide for yourself what is more valueable to you; more fruit or sooner fruit?

Sooner fruit is more fun!

Thanks, Amber for confirming what I was inclined to think. Maybe if I get any more blueberry plants I will grow them for "more fruit" and compare the results.

Looking forward to hearing the follow-up reports you folks will post
this coming spring!

Susie

I need to learn to spell and check my typos better:) I will tell you one more thing I learned this year. Cover the fruit with a net so that the birds do not get to enjoy at your expense. I learned this the hard way.

I always remove all flowers the first year for all fruit plants. It isn't just that the bushes will grow stronger and faster if they are not allowed to fruit. Some plants are smart enough to know at what age to fruit and how much to fruit, it is why some plants like oranges produce huge numbers of blooms and then later drop a lot of the fruit when it is still small. BB are dumb, they have a bad habit of over producing especially when young and if a young plant is allowed to fruit it will weaken the plant. Not only will this weakness result in reduced vigor and delay when the bush becomes mature it is much more likely to become diseased and die. If you let that plant produce you are opening the door for cane blight and every other disease that a healthy young plant would shrug off. While cane blight is an annoyance mostly on older bushes on young bushes it will kill them a great percentage of the time.

Far as taking two plants and removing the flowers from one and letting the other fruit I have done just that. The results were the plant that was allowed to fruit freely produced 1/4 a cup of fruit the first year and put out two flushes of growth both of which were approx 4 inches. The plant that was not allowed to fruit produced 4 flushes of new growth for 24 inches of total growth. Basically the plant that did not produce more than doubled in size while at the same time produced 3 new canes from the base while the other plant produced none. The next season the plant that was allowed to produce the first year gave almost a cup of fruit and the other plant gave 3 cups.

I am in the process now of redoing this experiment as it was pointed out that just using 1 of each plant was flawed. This time I used 9 plants of the variety Sunshine Blue. All were planted the same day and all were the same size and have received the same care and fertilizer. 6 of the plants I removed the flowers as they formed and the other 3 I let produce fruit and they produced abundantly. The plants were put in the ground this past March. I am waiting for this years fruiting to make the first fruit comparison but the size difference between the 6 not allowed to fruit and the 3 that were allowed to fruit is dramatic. The nonfruiting plants are 3 times the size of those that were allowed to fruit. I will take pictures if anyone is curious.

Not telling anyone what to do and not criticizing anyone for wanting to taste the fruits of their labor sooner. It just seems to be false economy to allow the plants to produce the first year IMHO. The forum is about expressing ideas and knowledge so people can make their own informed decisions.

bamboo_rabbit-I believe everything you said because it makes sense to me. However some of us just can't wait two years for gratification. The second year I lost most of my fruit to birds anyway so you never know what the future may hold. If I had a lot of blueberry plants I would have removed the fruit, but I only had one. I guess I was lucky because my plant has never had any disease and it is still doing pretty well in its little pot. Thanks for sharing your information. It is really helpful to everyone when people share the results of their experiments.

I also want to thank you, Bamboo Rabbit. . . . your report of your experiment taught me alot.

And thanks Amber for the tip aboput bird-netting!

Susie

Amber,

I understand completely. Perhaps a compromise between the two methods would be the best bet. Allow the plant to produce some fruit but not all it wants.

another way is to buy two blueberry plants, one you remove all the blooms the correct way and the other you leave alone as your sacrificial (I can't wait) plant. You can even call it your own personal 'experiment' so you won't have feelings of guilt when the poor lil bugger turns out later with dwarfism and you smile with blue lips.

Lou

Lou,

You do have a way with words lol.

I have belatedly decided that I should have removed the flower buds from my young blueberries. By now the blooms have mostly fallen off. I bought the plants (7) last spring with fruit already on them so the buds were not removed then. Being anxious to have fruit I didn't remove them this year either. But after rereading these posts and other things, I'm worried about stem blight and losing the plants - which would really delay things. At this point what should I do?

Well, I'm sold. My two new blueberry plants had plenty of blooms and I just removed them today. Hope I did it right. I'm definitely more interested in having them around for a long time to come than a cup of blueberries this year, but I do understand not wanting to do it--they looked nice and it wasn't easy :).

Dunn.

A follow up. Can't find much on a search of blueberries and dwarfism. I assume it just means they didn't grow as big like they were supposed to for some reason?

Also--would the same hold true for a new peach tree? The blooms are gone and small gray peaches are forming up. Will they drop or do I need to get the clippers?

Gracias.

Dunn.

Dwarfism? Do you mean fruit are small or your plants are small? Some varieties of blueberries are smaller than others naturally.

Just asking what Lou meant. That something?

Dunning,
It was more a play on words to mean the plant would not be as robust and not actual plant dwarfism. Not removing the young plants blooms weakens it and the canes it puts out will be thinner, shorter and fewer. It takes a lot of the plants energy to make fruits, energy it could have better used to put into initial growth. I was not talking about the size of the berries, but rather the size of the plant over it's growing years. Berry size is determined by it's genetics (and culling). The same does hold true for fruit trees as well, but most fruit trees will cast their fruit when they are young. Even when they are older it is best to cull a few fruits or all the fruit on the tree will be small, I remove (cull) approximately one third on mature trees thereby allowing the fruits left to grow larger and leaving strength for the tree itself. On a young tree I will leave just a very very few fruits so I can test how they taste and if not acceptable to my taste I will graft a branch from a tree that is to my taste onto it. I have over 50 fruit trees and each year I buy around 10 new trees plus I make a few clones of my own. I've 'worried' a M111 root stock (commonly used for apple rootstock) to now make more trees for my clones.(what you all would call suckers I now can remove the sucker with a good root to it to use as M111 rootstock for my grafting new trees onto it).

I guess I got carried away with explanations,
Lou

Maybe a better word to use instead of dwarfism is stunting. BB that are allowed to overproduce when young or are not given the proper soil will never reach their full potential.

My 3 year old "Windsor" are already fruiting! Last week, blooms, this week, little green berries! I went with the southern highbush because of our micro climate. I chose the Windsor because they're strong and can handle the oversized berries (as large as a muscadine)...I don't grow for asthetics, I grow for canning and I get more fruit from each berry.

My 5 Windsors have fruit as well. They are actually right on time but last year they were delayed almost 2 full weeks.

Sent Bamboo-Rabbit a message...I'm confused. TrueBlue says these plants are "field ready" 3 year olds. In the words of TrueBlue:

"trueBLUE's 3 gallon Field Ready blueberry plants will give you a jump start on your fruiting season. Depending upon the different growth characteristics of the southern high bush varieties most plants will average 18-36" inches in height. Depending on the customer needs and the time of year the plants may be pruned to 22" - 26" prior to shipping."

I asked the salesman about pruning and she told me that they would be pruned just before shipping.

Do I still need to remove the flowers? If they're "field ready" has that already been done? Do I need to call TrueBlue on Monday, lol? They're already setting fruit, so if I need to remove the blooms, I'd like to get it done before I'm cutting fruit off instead of flowers...don't want to incur any damage that can be avoided...

Thanks ya'll!

Deannac,

Got your email. I would assume by field ready it is simply their way of saying the plants are ready for normal growing conditions. I took a look at their site as I know nothing about them. I will say the plants are probably not a full 3 years old but probably 2+ years old.

The flower buds are set in the late summer/fall so if they pruned them in the winter they will have removed all the flower buds.

So, I'm good? I can leave the berries?

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply...

I actually lost sleep over this, lol!

Deanna,

I sent you a longer email but I think I am confused. Are you asking me if you can leave the flowers and fruit on the plants you are just now buying? Or are these plants you already have? If it is the new plants...if it was me I would prune them HARD, much harder than the company will and make sure all the flowers are removed. Companies are reluctant to prune as hard as they should because some people will complain the plants are too small. But it is better for the plant to be pruned. For example if the plant comes in and is 24" tall I would knock it down to just 2 limbs and the plant would be reduced to 12".

After that initial pruning they won't need dormant season pruned again for several years except to remove the twiggy growth near the base. It is still advisable to summer prune immediately after the fruit is harvested but that is just for bearing plants.

Okay...I need to prune. I'll do a bit of research...they seem to be like azaleas in the overall "texture" of the plant...I can take a 5' azalea and prune it down to sticks (about 2 ft).

I just purchased these a couple of weeks ago, and they're setting fruit like mad, but I can see that there are a few stems that should be branches!

There are a couple of new, thick canes (about a foot long), on one plant, but the other has more flowers...

I'll read up a bit, then I'll come back to cry on your shoulder...:P

Thanks so much!

Deanna,

Young BB bushes are dumb and they will bear themselves to death so you are doing the right thing as hard as it is.....trust me I know. You will be rewarded though this summer watching those small bushes take off. A word of warning though.....you say the plants are blooming now right? IF they have already leafed out you should not prune them too severely.

Lol...too late...they're sticks.

There are unopened buds on the new growth, but I took about 40% of each plant. I gave them a deep watering before I cut them and am giving them an azalea fertilizer late this afternoon...I had given them a follicular feeding the evening before, so I'm hoping they're like the azaleas and will give me full bushes by the end of summer.

I noticed that the leaves had some rust spots, so I decided to take the worst of those branches and see what happens...if worse comes to worse, I'll get more...

There was also quite a bit of cross branching. They were about 20", now they're about a foot..(blueberries are coming into season anyway, so I'll can what I can get from the local farmers and pray for the sticks)

Wouldn't hurt if you sent a prayer or two up for them as well :)

Sorry:) Should have mentioned it sooner but they will be fine. Sounds like you are doing everything right. The rust spots were on last years dark green leaves that were still on the plants or on the brand new light green new leaves? Rust spots on BB are as a rule a sign the plant wants something and not generally really rust (though they can get rust). Going to make a post today that shows what not allowing BB to fruit that first year does for them.

The "rust" is on the old leaves. The new growth has foliar buds, so I'm assuming that they'll go ahead and produce the new leaves and hopefully send up some new shoots.

I should have noticed (and realized this AFTER I'd done the pruning) that there was little foliage...buds, but no leaves to speak of...that should have been a warning in itself. It was putting all it's energy into fruiting and not into sustaining itself...(light bulb flashes on)

I'm a brutal pruner...my azaleas are 30 years old and so thick you HAVE to have a machete to get between them...I'll cut them down to wood every 3 years or so, everyone FREAKS OUT, swearing I've killed them, but mine are blooming and will need pruning in about 3 weeks for a second bloom, when everyone else is getting the first round of spotty blooming!

The blueberries feel and look like azaleas. The growth pattern "feels" the same. So, I think I'll give em a half tablespoon of sulfur to boost the acid and wait to give them the azalea fertilizer for a week until I put them in their permanent containers.

I expect for them to be really full by fall...watching youtube, I see that late winter, early spring is the best time to prune them anyway...I even sharpened my clippers before I cut them, lol!! (I should explain that I actually cut my rose monsters down with a machete every year)

I'll take some pics of the sticks and we'll see how they do!

Deanna,

Go figure...I have a heck of a time growing Azaleas, they are always spindly.....

Rust on older leaves especially if it looks like they were sprinkled with paprika is a sighn of too high PH or too low on nitrogen, those 2 go hand in hand anyway with BB.

The only difference with the southern highbush is on bearing age plants (like yours will be next summer) is immediately after fruit production is over they should be pruned and fertilized as it makes them put out an extra flush iof growth and a lot of times that is when the plant will throw out the big new canes from near the base. Because of our longgg grow season those summer shoots have enough time to grow and be ready to make flower buds by that same fall.

When you prune the bushes it is a good idea to carry a spritz bottle of bleach water with you to mist the clipper blades with. It is so darn easy to transfer cane blight from unhealthy plants to healthy ones. Watch for canes that suddenly die but retain the dead leaves.. I'm not sure if you have to be careful pruning Azaleas or not??? Of course I never prune mine.perhaps that is why they are so spindly?

The bleach is a good idea! Now I have something ELSE to watch for, lol...

I'm thinking it's low pH as well...that's why I'm going to add a bit of elemental sulfur. It lowers the pH, therefore increasing acidity...

YES, you DO need to prune your azaleas. You can actually take 60-70% of a healthy plant. If they're spindly, prune them down to bare canes. You'll have to wait a bit because I'm assuming they're setting buds...mine are already in full bloom.

I've never been careful pruning the azaleas. They're dang near indestructible! After a severe pruning, which can be done in the late spring after the bloom, or you can do it in late fall (that's when I do mine) so they get folliar and flower buds the next spring.

Even if they're in mostly shade, they'll still get thick and bloom if you take half the plant. If they're 5' tall, I'd take them down to 3', then in the fall/winter, I'd take them down another foot. You'll be amazed at the difference (and see why I compare them to blueberry bushes...they may be from the same family...I'll have to check)

Learning a LOT! Fun talking to you! (maybe I'll sow some peas in the pots before I plant the blues, that should fix enough nitrogen without risking burning them...hmmm.)