Protecting bushes / berry plants from heavy snow

just wondering for the ones like me that have to deal with heavy snow. does anyone have a tip to protect your bushes like blueberries? every year i get damage i have to prune off. sometimes splitting a bush in half. with the amount plants and snow i have, it isn’t practical to try and cover all of them and some like my hazels are too big to cover anyway. besides covering would just get weighed down and crush the whole plant anyway. i can’t build up most of my bushes because the snow prunes them hard every year. any ideas or do i just need to deal with it.

I’m wondering about in late fall throwing a strap around the bush and drawing the branches in close. I saw a picture of some fruit trees where they had a strap around the main scaffolds, which I assumed was to prevent a split off in winter snow load.

I’ve seen that for bigger trees but my main concern is for my blueberries lingon berries honey berries hazels and currants that are a dense open bush. they seem to suffer the most damage. maybe could do that with currants, hazels and honey berries . but blueberries and lingonberries would be hard to do. sad to see nice growth put on in summer, to have half of it split off the plant.

Sometimes in late spring you can get heavy, wet snows, and if your plants made it that far it might be worthwhile to spray them down with water. Otherwise I kinda like the idea of bunching them as Palmer suggested.

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