Here’s a video I made about why I don’t prune my blueberries. The more fruit buds you keep, the more blueberries you will have!
The more you prune, the less blueberries you will have, so why prune?
It also saves a lot of work!
Some people say that you have to prune to get big or healthy fruit, but that hasn’t been the case for me. As long as the bush is in healthy soil with access to lots of moisture, it will produce tons of healthy blueberries of good size!
It’s also really common for people to say to prune for shape, but blueberries and other plants will self prune in shaded areas, and focus more growth on sunny areas.
I may prune if the limb is already completely dead or if it has been badly damaged like being torn from a deer bite. Other than something like that, I let the bush grow like it wants to, and even this very minimal pruning doesn’t need to be done most of time. The dead limb will fall off naturally and heal over, and most of the time a damaged wound will also heal fine, with the branch dying back to a live bud and the damaged part will fall off. Sometimes a damaged limb may not heal back ideally by itself if it is very jagged or peeled off, but it can be cut back to a healthy part of the limb with a clean cut so it can heal easier.
Yeah, at first I kind of “forgot” , then I realized that I was getting a lot more fruit by not pruning. Now I don’t prune at all, except very minorly like was mentioned above.
I get new growth from old branches that look like they are dead, but will all of a sudden send up a new and healthy vigorous and productive shoot to produce lots of new berries!
They will also send up lots of new shoots from around the edges of the bush where the bush can expand even more and produce even more fruit!
Well this thread makes me feel better, because we moved into our house three years ago, and there were mature blueberry bushes in place, probably never really cared for…and I still haven’t touched them yet! We do get a lot of fruit, though!
I treat each cultivar differently. I have Liberty which if unpruned will overproduce so badly all the fruit is very small. If you at least thin you get bigger and sweeter fruit. A plant can only make so much sugar. Do you want that sugar in 100 berries or 300 berries? The former would be a hell of a lot sweeter.
Chandler tends not to branch well if not pruned. Once most of your branches become unproductive you are going to have few berries. Most canes or branches are productive for about 5 years. After that not so much. Chandler needs to be pruned to stimulate branching.
All my other cultivars do not overproduce and branch fairly well. I don’t prune much the first 3-5 years then pruning to renew wood. Blueberries are pruned rather uniquely. An example would be pruning to new growth from secondary branches on canes instead of removing full cane. Mine are old enough the oldest cane is removed yearly to keep them productive and stimulate branching. I may decide to prune to new growth instead of completely off, or leave if the plant has few canes.
Once plants are big production is usually not an issue. Mine range from 300 berries to 700 berries (Liberty). This year liberty is getting a severe pruning as it way overproduced last year. 700 berries is too much and they were small and tart. Usually Liberty berries are sweet.
I don’t regularly prune mine, they seem to behave themselves pretty well. I do prune to train them, because most bushes want to grow a crown with a million little twigs. I try to convince them to grow a bit of a central leader to get the berries off the ground and space out the branches vertically for light penetration and ease of picking.
Mine are mostly Sharpblue, Misty, Emerald and Jewel. All of them grow amazing out here in CA.
