I’ve had southern highbush blueberries growing in my yard for quite a few years now, and I’ve been discovering baby blueberry bushes growing in the mulch several feet from the bushes. There are about 12 of them, and I’ve transplanted six of them into pots, in good blueberry soil. Is it worth it? Is it possible that these blueberry seedlings would eventually produce good fruit? The parents are either Southmoon, Misty, or possibly O’Neal which I took out last year (they were too confused by our weather and had no seasonal cycle at all, just a few blueberries and a few flowers all through the year). My Southmoons produce divine berries, and the Mistys are good too.
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I think it’s worth a try, keep the better growing ones, then go by taste.
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Well, it’s the kind of thing I’d do just to find out- and after all, where do new blueberries come from in the wild?
I’d say you have an excellent chance of success. Have you determined whether they’re seedlings or from roots?
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i think you should definitely grow them out, i’ve never had a wild blueberry that wasn’t delicious, they’re just smaller and usually better tasting. yours wouldn’t be wild, but i bet they’re good.
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I’m busy crossing brambles, and stone fruit, but I’ll get to blueberries.
I have some ideas.
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@Drew51 that’s a good idea to select for the faster growing ones. There’s a huge difference between these–some are already a foot high, and others are dense little bushes two inches tall. Although I don’t know if I’ll have the heart to cull any of them, they’re so cute!
@marknmt I’m pretty sure they’re seedlings. They have tiny little self-contained root systems unattached to any runners from the main bushes. Plus they are tiny, whereas the new canes from that pop up from the roots of my full-grown bushes are much bigger and faster growing. Sometimes the canes from the root systems come up a foot from the bush though! And, unfortunately, they come up outside of their gopher baskets 
@Chestnut I wonder if they will have reverted to some of the characteristics of wild blueberries. That would be very cool!
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These young blueberries may well be clones coming up from roots or rhizomes from the mother plants, so they may well be identical to those plants. My guess is that this is what’s most likely happening. God bless.
Why is that? They seem easy to cross, and if seedlings most likely a cross, not a self pollinated specimen, although it could be that too.
Most seeds as far as I know are viable, so not sure why not? In California too.
The young blueberry plants are seedlings, then they would be genetically unique. However, most species of the genus Vaccinium tend to clone themselves through underground roots and rhizomes forming colonies in the wild. That’s just the default growth habit of most species in the genus. Many cultivated varieties have that tendency bread out of them to one extent or another. But they will all do it some. Every healthy blueberry bush I have ever had dealings with has suckered up babies from its roots at some time or another. If you see young blueberry plants spring up from around older bush, the default assumption should not be that they are seedlings. Rather, the default assumption is that they are suckers from the mature bush. One only need do a little investigative digging around the babies to find out for sure.
One way to propagate blueberries and swamp huckleberries (Vaccinium elliottii) is to simply cut around an adult bush at the edge of its drip line. Everywhere that you sever a root, the piece severed from the mother plant will sprout a new shoot. If you did near a blueberry bush, you are very likely to stimulate it to make some babies asexually. God bless.
Marcus
Mine never have, I’m growing Northerns.mostly. never seen a sucker ever.
I have ten cultivars of fruiting age. Never had a volunteer either for that matter.
It would be interesting to see what northern highbush blueberries would do if you root pruned some around the trip line. My hunch is that they will sucker.
I believe that most southern highbush blueberries have some rabbit eye blueberry genes in them. Rabbit Eye blueberries sucker a lot. The older varieties sucker way more than the newer varieties do. Mine sucker enough that I have nowhere near enough space to accommodate all the plants my bushes make.
I’m the only one I know of who grows what we call “huckleberries” in south Georgia (Vaccinium elliottii). My plants were transplanted from the wild, and some are way better than others. I’m slowly forcing my better plants to sicker by root pruning and expanding the huckleberry patch with the better types. Eventually I plan to start culling the plants that either don’t grow well or produce sub standard berries with bushes propagated in this way. God bless.
Marcus
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I want to cross Sweetcrisp with a Northern and try and get a bigger, more cold hardy berry that is crisp like Sweetcrisp. It may take a decade to get a good one, I have nothing else to do, so why not?
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Go for it. Good luck, Bill
I will eventually, right now I’m dealing with fig, paw paw, and bramble seedlings. Once more stable I will start trying crosses. I’m also stratifying Morus Negra (black mulberry) and Nadia Cherry-plum hybrid seeds. The Mulberry seeds are from Bulgaria. I’m hoping next spring I can start.
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Backyard breeding sounds like fun and would be something that I would do if I had the space. Personally, if I had the space time and were a little younger I would try to improve Vaccinium elliottii (huckleberries) through selective breeding. I would also be interested in trying to improve another wild blueberry, Vaccinium stamenium, which is locally called gooseberry but is really a blueberry that looks like a gooseberry and tastes like a cross between bubble gum and root-bear. Realistically the best I can do is propagate my best huckleberries through root cuttings and make them available to friends who want to try and grow them. God bless.
I’m not young by any means (60). I already got a nice pink raspberry this year.The taste is excellent. I’m calling it Irene after my mother who used to grow roses where it is planted.
It is orange at first than turns pink.
What is strange is it appears to be summer bearing when both parents were everbearing. Which is OK as it looks a lot like Double Gold, but double Gold is everbearing, so a good distinction there.
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Hey good ole buddy, old friend! 
Yeah, I definitely have plenty of shoots from the roots of my main plants, @coolmantoole, but as I say, these seedlings are not connected to roots or rhizomes, and clearly have complete tiny roots of their own when I dig them up. Plus some are quite far from the original bushes, as in, on the other side my big apple tree! They also have varying characteristics. Some grow straight up (although with a thinner stem than the root sucker sprouts) and some are low and bushy.
Drew, I wonder if maybe you are able to keep the birds away better than I am, or you’re more efficient at picking the berries. I think the birds here spread the berries around quite a bit when they have their months-long annual blueberry festival in my yard 
But also, there’s quite a bit of bark mulch all over my yard, and maybe that makes it easier for the seeds to sprout, because they just fall through the mulch and then are in a good sprouting environment.
That’s a beautiful pink raspberry!
Beautiful looking fruit. How does it taste? Are you planning on distributing it? (Not asking for myself, as most raspberries don’t tolerate our hot climate, just curious.)
The taste is excellent. Rather low acid for a raspberry. And I’ll probably distribute for free. No plans to market. The plant is still young so needs time to sucker. It is a cross between Polka and Anne. Appears to be summer bearing although that is hard to tell. Raspberries that bear fall crops commonly are late in fall fruiting when young.
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