How to Prune Blueberry Plants
Pruning is required on blueberry bushes for removing dead broken branches, slender or brushy wood braches that are growing horizontally and around the base of the blueberry plant. By removing old stems that are not producing new shoots, fruiting properly or plants that are over six years in age, pruning will promote new healthy growth.
After planting your blueberry bushes you will need to start a pruning program. You first need to remove any flowering buds by tipping the shoots. This will keep the plants growth centered in the roots and branches providing a faster growing bush with more fruit production in the 2nd or 3rd season.
You will find that highbush blueberry plants often times overbear fruit, and an annual pruning of the highbush is needed to keep the bush healthy. You will also need to remove low branches, and twiggy growth that has many flowing buds on your 3 to 4 year old blueberry bushes.
Rabbiteye blueberries need small pruning till they reach about six to eight feet tall. Remove 1 to 3 of the biggest branches each winter that are nearest to the ground level or a total of roughly twenty percent of the limb cover. Doing this type of pruning over a 5 year period will renew your bush, and more productive branches will sprout out from the old branches. In addition, excessively tall blueberry bushes can be pruned back to six to eight feet each winter.
You will want to start this cane renewing program when the bushes are about four or five feet tall. First cut back the older, weaker, or diseased branches then, among the leftover branches, commence with the older ones and prune roughly 2 each year back either to powerful laterals or to inside one foot of the ground. Over a period of 4 or 5 years, a new rejuvenated bush framework will be developed.
It is a good rule of thumb to remember that it is the 3-5 years old branches that produce the majority of the fruit,and by pruning back the branches older than that you will begin a new healthy cane to replace the older less heartybranch with a new energetic fruit producing one.
Pruning should be done in the fall or winter when the plant is dormant. Shaping blueberry bushes is not recommended as the ends of the branches is where the berries are produced, so by shaping your blueberry plant you will basically be cutting off the fruit buds.
Learn more about caring for your blueberry bushes. From preparing the soil in the proper pH balance, to growing blueberry bushes, and buying blueberry bushes online. You can find many interesting article pertaining to blueberry bushes.
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Claire Eye Design, LLC: Blueberries
Even better, I noticed that my blueberry plant is sprouting buds again this year!
New Life On A Homestead » Blog Archive » Planting Blueberry Bushes
Journal of a California girl living in the country. Posts include learning to garden, canning and pruning.l
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