How to Prune a Blueberry Bush for a Larger Harvest

so today I'm gonna walk you through how to prune your blueberry bush not only for the health and vigor of the bush but also to increase your harvest yield I'm Melissa Kay Norris the author of the made-from-scratch life handmade host of the pioneering today podcast and we raised 100% of our own meat on our homestead as well as over 50% of our fruits and vegetables and this is how we prune our blueberries to make sure that we get a harvest to take us through the entire year without buying them from the store so the first thing we're gonna need is we have got some handheld pruning shears and for the larger canes I've also got the lockers so we've got our long-handled and I just used these to prune our elderberry bushes a few days ago you always want to make sure that you are sanitizing your shears so that if there is any disease but you're not transferring that between plants so an easy way to do that is to just take some rubbing alcohol or this is isopropyl alcohol and pour that over the part that's going to come in contact with the bush when you're making your cuts [Music] now a pruning time is going to depend upon your growing climate for us I like to prune here in the Pacific Northwest and we're a gardening zone seven the end of January into February the reason for that is because you can see your fruit buds so you know where your fruit blossoms are going to be and where you're going to have your blueberries versus what is just the leaf buds and this is going to be really important when you're making your pruning cuts and your pruning decisions it's best if you can prune on a dry day so when your blueberry plant is only one or two years old the only thing that you would prune for it would be any broken or diseased branches after that as you start to get into three four five six and hopefully decade old blueberry plants then you're going to be making some more severe cuts and I'm going to walk you through each of those this plant right here is about a nine year old blueberry plant so no matter what plant it is or the size I should say age of the bush that you're going to be pruning the first thing that we're going to look for is the new growth vs. dead or diseased growth your new growth you're going to be able to visually see really easy as this bright red color and it's more supple and Viney looking your old growth is gonna be the darker gray and more woody looking wood then you're gonna have areas where you have got dead branches and you can see those because they're usually very dark brown sometimes they'll be black and they don't show any signs of new growth so the first cut that I make when I'm looking at a plant and we're getting ready to prune and this is going to be true no matter what age the plant is even your younger ones is you want to cut out any of the dead areas so whenever we're making a pruning cut when we're cutting out dead we're gonna do it at a 45 degree angle and a nice sharp and clean cut so pruning shears are essential and you want to make sure that they're nice and sharp so you're gonna come right below that dead area into the healthy tissue and at a 45 degree angle you're gonna make your cuts with that another one right here that's right above a fruiting bud and so we're gonna come right above there and we'll also get that cut off so this is obviously a dead branch so they want to remove that now when you're removing a full branch that's dead we're actually going to come and not do that 45 angle cut you're gonna come right up to this part and you're just gonna do it flush right up against it now here we've got at the tip here these are all fruiting buds so these larger swollen ones at the tip these are all going to be multiple blossoms and you're gonna get a handful of berries right here then down here these are all what your little leaf buds are so this is just going to be foilage and you can tell when we're looking at this branch as this comes out there's hardly anything on this this is older wood and it's also growing out into the Iowa where we go through and mow so I'm going to remove this because even though there is a couple of brooding buds they're very small and there's no growth or proof happening on this so we're going to remove this and again we're just gonna do this right up flush on that branch you always want to make sure you remove any of the material that you're pruning you don't want to leave the dead or diseased branches and you want to take those out and this is just on the end of here this is dead so we're gonna take that off as well as right here but we're going to leave these because they're fruiting and when they're really small like this this little suede just doesn't have anything on it you can almost just pray from off the little tiny ones when you're looking at the center of your blueberry bush the wood that is six years or older which is going to be characteristic of being a lot thicker around dark and this is my the oldest pieces they have all the moss on them after they've hit about six years of age you're gonna be able to tell that they stopped producing as well and you're gonna want to start thinning them out so some of these younger newer canes can become a part of the blueberry bush and that you always keep it bigger so this here has got a lot of dead and there's nothing coming on this so I'm going to take this actually all the way down to the ground and we're gonna cut that off really low and remove it that also is going to allow more Sun and airflow to get in here so that we don't have fungal disease setting in as much and that the berries can get ripen but they're not shaded by a lot of boilage so one of the things that I like to do is to travel up this branch and I'm going to leave part of this even though this is older wood when I'm looking at it there's a lot of blueberry blossoms on this branch and there's still a lot of good here however this older branch right here it's shooting into the middle of the plant which I want to keep that a little bit more open as I said for airflow and to help those berries to ripen and this doesn't have a ton of new growth it actually has quite a bit of old on there so I'm just going to remove this portion and take that out and then we're gonna let the rest of this grow and then next year I probably will remove this in its entirety when this one has filled in a little bit more okay so as we're looking at this plant over here you can see this is one of those older canes and as I come out and examine it there's hardly any new growth on this there's a few little fruit blossoms but there's just not a lot it's not very vigorous it's not adding much to the plant and it's taking away so I'm gonna actually when you get to these bigger canes on here we're gonna take our loppers we've got the longer handle so you just got more leverage and you want to go down really low when you're removing a cane and we're gonna just remove and cut that out and again as I'm looking at this older wood now this wood isn't quite as old it's got a little bit more red to it a little bit of moss growth on it and it's not as thick so I can tell that these are slightly newer though they are getting older but I need to evaluate them because I have a lot going on in the center here and we need to see which one is the healthiest because these are starting to rub and you don't ever want to have your canes or if you're even pruning your fruit trees when they start to rub that's a place for disease and insects to enter into the plant so we want to remove anything that is rubbing and causing friction against one another so we're gonna evaluate and see which of these are the healthiest so this has a lot out here there's hardly any fruit buds on here there's a little bit but there's not a lot of new growth and it's not going to be a lot of fruit production whereas this one I've got quite a bit of fruit buds here and a lot coming up through and here so I'm gonna remove this one out it's also an older cane and it's just less vigorous so again you're gonna get your lopper right in there at the base making sure you have the right ones selected and we're gonna take this one out actually now that I've got it removed I can kind of get in there in a little bit better angle and we're gonna go even a little bit deeper taking that out at the ground level so this one here even though this isn't a super old one you can see where we've had breakage here you want to make sure that we remove this because that is an easy entry point for disease and insects to come in I've also got some dead branches coming off of this and as we look at it even though this is a little bit newer growth it's not very vigorous there's quite a few dead spots and there's only a few fruit buds so I'm just gonna take this one all the way out and completely remove it from the blueberry plant now these are smaller but there's only one fruit bud on this entire thing and they're growing back in towards the center of the bush and because they're not showing good signs they're not very vigorous I'm gonna go ahead and take these out as well remove any dead dead wood like that even though we're going to keep this cane so we removed a couple of canes from the center but as we come into this one this is an older cane again and this growth down here doesn't really have a whole lot on it I've got some dead stuff I don't have any growth coming here this is all dead and even though I've got one healthier vigorous spot on this cane it's in the center and because it's so old it's gonna stop producing each year I'm going to get less and less fruit off of it so we're gonna come down to again you want to come down right to the base and get as low in there as you can and we're gonna remove that cave that also really opens up the center of our blueberry plant so these blossoms that are in here and these canes can come in and have good airflow I've also got down here some younger canes that are just starting and these ones already have fruit buds right here and are showing good promise so I'm going to leave this one because it's already showing fruit production and I'm going to take this one out so this can actually replace the cane that we just removed so we're going to come over on this side of the bush and here I've got some older wood and as it comes out there are some fruit blossoms on here but it's not really vigorous so what I'm going to do is this is some newer wood that does have some fruit blossoms on it but as you look at this it's got a lot of new growth but there's only one blossom on here so this cane I'm gonna take out right here at the bottom now as we look over here I've got some good fruit budding coming on over here and this is new growth I don't have a lot of new growth coming out here and this is an older cane but I know I'm gonna get quite a bit of fruit off of this section and this section so I'm going to leave this this year and just take out the part that is a little bit dead here on the end and then this one's not doing very good there's a couple fruit blossoms but there's not a lot so I'm actually just gonna cut this one all the way back and then just remove the dead parts here on the tip and on this one I don't have a lot of fruit bud and I've got some dead wood so again we're just gonna take this down to the bottom there and kind of this one has some fruit blossoms here so I'm going to leave that because I'll probably remove this pane next year but just so you can kind of see how you can plan to leave some for this year and then you'll know the following year you're gonna remove it and if you enjoyed this video on learning how to prune your blueberries make sure that you hit subscribe and hit the little bell so that you get notified when our next video comes out thanks so much we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 355,060

Keywords: pruning blueberries, organic gardening, how to, how to prune, growing blueberries, blueberry bushes, care for blueberry plants, care for blueberry bushes, pruning blueberries bushes, pruning blueberries pacific northwest, pruning blueberries in pots, how to prune a blueberry bush, how to prune a blueberry bush for a larger harvest, how to prune blueberry bushes, blueberry bushes care and pruning, blueberry bushes in winter, blueberry bushes pruning

Id: Lj2TP5YxOyI

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019