I thought it would be good to start isolating blueberries by year.
How are your berries doing. At my location near central Alabama my rabbit eyes are getting big now. This has been an unusual spring that the early cold weather destroyed some of the fruit and some of the berries have what looks like freeze damage on the tips. Looking forward to hearing how your backyard blues are doing. For the first time this year I added some powdered and pellet sulphur around my bushes and then put some mulch over it. I also for the first time added a small amount of urea around them. Although my berries have a little damage my plants are growing really well.
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First year, no berries. Growing in container for sunshine blue, misty, pink lemonade and sweet crisp.
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I plan on getting 3 bushes this year once November rolls around. Powderblue, Tifblue, and Ochlockonee.
All should avoid most late frost or really cold temps in my area.
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I just planted 4 this year. 3 from Fedco and one from another generous forum member @Eme . They are Cara’s Choice, Chandler and 2 Blue Rays.
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You have nice looking home for your plants.
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I’ll grab some photos of the in ground bushes later. Some, like Premier, have done well and are getting some nice size on them despite the deer pressure. Others are more sketchy. I’ll need to get more mulch down soon as there are a lot of weeds getting through now. Also late on fertilizing this year.
One, I believe O’Neal, is already turning blue and should be ready in a few days. A few V. elliottii berries actually partially ripened last week but I think they had been damaged so the plants were just getting rid of the berries early.
I did recently buy one gallon sized Emerald, Sunshine Blue, and Sharp Blue blueberries for the big box store. Going to plant them in the warmer front yard so they get going earlier, I’ll probably order a few southern highbush varieties to put up there with them for the earliest possible harvest.
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Does anyone know of any southern adapted varieties with very dark berries and a more “wild” flavor? I’ve heard about Sunset Blue and will probably give it a try. And there’s Nocturne which sounds very interesting but I’m a little unsure of it’s adaption here. Anyone know of others?
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Strait up Darrow Blueberries have exceptional flavor. Though the berries are small. It is my favorite of the wild Blueberries to grow.
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I’ve had a jewel and emerald in these felt grow bags of unknown volume since I’ll guess spring of ‘22. The small one is an emerald planted fall of ‘25. We’ve been eating off of the big two for weeks, get a handful or two once or twice a week. Just pulled the first off the new guy, wasn’t all the way there, but the little man doesn’t care
Participating in this forum is telling me I need to keep better records. I never know when anything happened
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Been meaning to order some.
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Premier, about 5 ft tall now
O’Neill, early but struggling
Powderblue really not putting on enough leaves
Elliott’s huckleberries
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I was hoping to try all my varieties this year, but they actually got quite a bit of frost damage from 4/21. And what flowered after oddly doesn’t seem to be pollinating at more than maybe 50%. I seem to keep pulling them from the ground and switching to containers. I have Jersey, sweetheart x2, blueray and patriot still in ground, and Elliot, Liberty, legacy, blueray, northland in containers. 4 were from spring 24 but moved when I realized the location was terrible, the rest from spring 25. Im trying to get Hannah and Cara’s choice, but it’s all a bit crazy since I don’t know what I’m doing! Maybe, one day, I’ll have berries for my kids…I’m trying to fertilize more regularly this year: I did cottonseed meal and alfalfa, then decided to simplify and do Holly tone monthly, and dilute ammonium sulfate every two weeks.
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As a stopgap, physalis is good. I especially like physalis grisea since it’s extremely quick to fruit and the berries are quite nice despite it being a wild species. Seems more pest resistant, though later in the year it does get the darn worm that all physalis seen to get. But by then it’ll probably be done fruiting anyway, it’s a short lived plant unlike the big tropical species like poha berry.
Litchi tomato is a bit terrifying to grow but the berries taste like mild blueberries to my palette.
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I have Ochlockonee, Vernon and Powderblue. Vernon is very vigorous, but bloom early, this year the frost whacked the bloom pretty badly. Ochlockonee blooms last and did much better
Top left: Vernon, right Ochlockonee
Bottom: Powderblue
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Thank you for the suggestions. I haven’t had one of those in 15 years and that would be fun to try!
How’s the O’Neil been for you generally? I almost got one since reports are that the flavor is tops, but read the production isn’t as good (at least in California). And blueberries are ultimately a volume game for toddlers
I think I have a lot of credence to this for bush #3 https://ucanr.edu/sites/default/files/2018-11/294708.pdf
So far I have Jellybean. Northand, Jersey, Patriot and Bluecrop in the ground. I had to fence the because a groundhog ate all the June berry bushes and was starting on the blueberries. The in ground ones seemed to be struggling after 2 years so this year I put some in whiskey barrel sized pots (Patriot, Bluecrop, o’Neil and Legacy). Added more sulfur to the mix than I did with the in ground ones. I may try amending their soil. So much limestone in Iowa. My Dad use to grow Blueberries in Oregon. I loved walking outside to gather breakast.
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