Hi Matt,

Your plant does look very healthy. And yes, it does look quite small for being a 3-4 year old plant. How tall and what variety is it? Maybe it didn't get enough winter chill? I read that bluberries need a certain amount of winter chill for flowerbuds to break along with enough sun light for them to develop properly. Blueberries need 6+ of sunlight a day to ripen the fruits.

Are you seeing any new vegetative buds breaking or growing? If you're not seeing any new vegetative buds developing in spring, it's a sign of not having enough winter chill - and the plant will have delay and uneven flowering and vegetative growth. I read that vegetative buds require more winter chill hours than flower buds, hence vegetative growth always come in after flowerbuds breaking first.

*** Just to add, according to the book I read, 'Blueberries: crop production in horiculture series', it's best to have a minimum of 3:1 leaves and berry ratio. 3 leaves for each berry on the branch so that the berries will taste sweeter and not sour.

Yea I'm not sure about the chill hours but I live in Virginia and I thought I saw something around 1000 chill hours. I know last winter was very mild but even the year before that when it was cold it did the same thing.

According to the book i read. Flowerbuds usually form on the tip of last year's growth during Autumn. If you're not seeing any flowerbuds by early winter, something is wrong - that the plant didn't have enough carbohydrates for flowerbuds development, which is unlikely in your case since your plant looks very healthy and showing a lot of green leaves for photosythysis.

Have you been fertilising them? Potassium encourages flower development and fruiting.

If your plants aren't growing much over the years, chances are, the roots aren't growing or expanding much either. Speaking from personal experience. Early Januray this year, I planted 5 sunshine blues in the garden bed since this variety can tolerate a higher soil ph than other cultivars - and my garden soil has a ph of 6. The plants grew a lot of new healthy green leaves at first but they didn't grow any taller. By early April, some of the newer leaves were showing minor signs of iron chlorosis, while my other variety 'blueberry burst' which I kept in a pot, grew like weed and almost triple in size compared to the ones in the garden bed.

I dug up all the sunshine blues from the garden bed and I noticed the roots didn't expand of grow much at all over the past 4 months, they were still in the confinement of the potting mix that I put in at the time of planting, the roots didn't go beyond the potting mix and integrate with the garden soil. 2 of the plant's rootballs were infested with beetle grubs - eating away half of the root mass.

Anyway, I potted them up and they started flowering very heavily in the beginning of May. I pulled off all the flowers 3 weeks ago and now a lot of new flowerbuds are breaking again.

I'm not suggesting that you go and dig up your plant to check the roots, maybe try watering it with ammonium sulfate and see if it'll grow any taller. See this thread.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1462273/one-and-7-yr-blueberry-growth-with-pictures

Just to be safe, maybe try watering it with half the dose of ammonium sulfate first and see how it goes.

It could be the roots. I think when I planted them a few years back I wasn't very knowledgeable and probably didn't break up the roots. The only thing I have been giving them is soil acidifier a couple times a year.

I would bet you that the roots are still in the small tight ball as when they went into the ground. If the surrounding soil is not amended at the time of planting and the root ball is not spread open the roots have little reason to want to spread out into the surrounding soil. I would dig up and replant.

Okay thanks a lot. I'm guessing the fall/winter would be the best time? Would they die if I did it now?

I'd put some high nitrogen fertilizer on it and see if that won't improve the growth. Replanting isn't going to help unless it includes a major soil improvement. Replanting in a sunnier location with better soil would be a plan.

It should grow where it is if it's getting enough fertilizer and water.

Some varieties are not self pollinating so if you only have one variety that might be the problem too.

I'm having the same issue as you. I have 8 blueberries in the ground that look healthy but no berries... They get 6hrs of sun and are only 3 to 3.5ft tall after 3 years. I have blue crop, kabluey Polaris, and Northland. I'm debating on moving them to pots but don't know if they will handle our winters. They lose a zone I hear. I don't think the roots can continue growing past the area I originally prepared for them even though I do add sulfur to maintain ph...

Hi cody,

I'm not sure why your blueberry plants aren't producing berries if they're healthy. All my blueberry plants developed flowerbuds over autumn, even the youngest and smallest plants (a foot tall) produced a few flowerbuds, even though some of them had only a few leaves.

I'm placing the plants in a spot where they get full sun light from early morning to sunset - about 10 to 12 hours of sun light a day during early to mid autumn.

I pulled off all the flowers from my Blueberry Burst and Sunshine Blues a few weeks ago, and now they're producing and breaking new flowerbuds again. They're refusing to go dormant. Even my Powderblue and Bluerose (shed all its red leaves 2 weeks ago) are flowering in early winter. I'm not sure why they're doing that because there're no bees and other insects to pollinate them. Powderblue and Bluerose usually produce crops in Dec-Jan in Australia. I don't think they have gotten enough chill hours yet. Bluerose needs 850 to 1000 chill hours to break buds. I'd be lucky to get 800 chill hours by early October in my area.

Though the potting mix I'm using does have Osmoscote 6 months slow release fertiliser in it, i'm not sure if that's causing some of the plants to flower so early and not going into dormancy. We don't get freezing temp in winter (usually between 2°C to 15°C). I'm watering my plants and spraying the foliage with seasol (seaweed solution) every fortnight. So far, they're doing well I think. My Magnolia is currently growing a new shoot and while half of my other blueberries are dormant, no leaves, no growth. I'm not sure why some of my blueberries are behaving so strangely, It's like they have gone haywire!