I planted blueberries about a year and a half ago. Last spring not much happened as expected but this spring I’ve gotten nothing. No blooms or anything. I have multiple varieties (some I didn’t keep the tag so I forget)…but I have Jewel, honey crisp, and pink lemonades among others. The plants themselves are in great (well I guess not great) shape, good growth…just no berries or blooms or anything. This spring it did get rust a bit…but the spray worked great and it’s cleared up.
I DO know my soil is not very acidic. I guess my first question would be what is the quickest way to ammend the soil? We’ve used blood meal this year.
What other reasons could I be facing? They get sun from around 11 on through sunset and is placed on a slight hill so the drainage is good.
Sounds like a fairly serious case of ‘impatience’. Maybe grow some cucumbers or tomatoes for a couple years for a quick harvest, and then come check on the blueberries in 2 or 3 years…
Often takes 5 years or more for a good blueberry crop.
wow, I never realized that. At our old place we had 15 plants and the first 2 years we had decent crops (3rd year we moved)…it wasn’t a GREAT year but we had berries come in.
I may have been a little over dramatic for effect, but if a plant is capable of 5 to 10 quarts of blueberries at full maturity, don’t be expecting anywhere near that quantity at age 3.
It’s hard to acidify soil at any time, and very difficult and slow to acidify soil you’re growing in. What is your soil pH?
Not sure where you are, but in California coastal valleys we usually get fruit first year and often have multiple crops. I usually try not to buy plants with fruit on them, but with blueberries you can literally go pick fruit from the bush while it’s still sitting in the nursery, they just fruit and fruit and it doesn’t seem to affect the vigor much.
Assuming they grow like mine, the Jewel should be delicious. I decided to trial some new varieties recently, Misty, Jewel and Emerald. Everybody agreed Jewel had the best flavor, was really juicy and somehow had few to no seeds in the berries.
If the plants are growing well with nice green foliage, they apparently are getting adequate iron, which is why alkaline soils are a problem- it isn’t that you need the proper pH to get yield- you need it to grow the plants.
I find it unlikely that you are over juicing them on N but it’s possible. I wonder if the varieties you are growing are productive where you are. If you’d mentioned varieties like Bluecrop, Berkely, and other productive commercial varieties I wouldn’t be wondering about this.
Blueberry may also have nailed it, but I’ve always had to remove berries from young plants to encourage them to grow- not wait for fruit.
Thanks everybody. I’m in Maryland. I moved from about 40 miles away and one zone away. The neighbors have all had luck with them. Sounds like I’ll just have to keep moving on and hope next years a little better. When I move them later in the summer/fall I’m going to have the urge to put blood meal down again. I’ve also thrown some chicken compost down but didn’t have enough for most of the plants so that didn’t go too far.
Not sure where you are in Maryland, but Jewell is a Southern Highbush developed in Florida. Its low chill hours and may not be the best variety for your climate especially if you do not have a very high level of organic matter in your soil.
If you have to move them, consider putting them in pots, that way you can absolutely control the acidity levels. I killed mine by putting it in the ground here in Cali.