Growing Blueberries – Best Tips for the Home Garden
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Learn how to grow blueberries in your home garden. We’ll take you step by step through planting, fertilizer and mulch, care and harvest.
We also touch on growing blueberries in containers, pruning and moving mature plants.
Growing Blueberries – Quick Guide
Blueberries are fairly easy to grow, if you follow some basic rules.
- Blueberries grow in USDA hardiness zones 3 through 10.
- Blueberry soil should be rich in organic matter, with soil pH between 4 and 5.5 (acidic soil).
- Plant blueberry bushes in full sun for best production. Plants will tolerate late afternoon shade.
- Blueberries prefer well drained soil.
- While blueberries are self-pollinating, planting a second variety will increase fruit production
- Space blueberry plants 4-6’ apart for highbush, 2-4’ for low bush with 6-8’ between rows
- Use several inches of organic mulch to prevent weeds.
- Apply organic fertilizer in spring when plants are starting to bud.
- Prune off damaged or crossing branches in late winter.
- Blueberries need around an inch of water per week during the growing season.
- Protect plant from wild animals, if needed.
- Harvest regularly to prevent spoilage.
How to Grow Blueberries
Let’s tackle each of these steps for growing blueberries in more detail.
Where do blueberries grow?
You can grow blueberries in USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 3 through 10.
Local microclimate and soil is important, too, as we’ll discuss below. Watch your local weather, talk with other gardeners to see what varieties grow well in your area.
For more information, read: Plant Hardiness Zones and Microclimate.
What’s the Best Soil for Blueberry Plants?
Healthy soil = healthy plants. Remember, these bushes have the potential to provide many years of delicious berries, so they are worth the extra effort.
Blueberries grow best with an acid soil pH between 4 and 5.5, so do a soil test before you start.
The best soil for blueberry plants is soil rich in acidic, organic material, like you would find on forest floor or edge of the forest.
Add Organic Matter
When you prepare your blueberry planting area, dig a generous amount of organic matter into your blueberry soil. Time and effort up front will make all the difference in plant performance.
Peat moss is commonly recommended, but pine needles, leaves and other tree fallout work just as well. If your soil is alkaline, you’ll either need to do a LOT of soil amending, or grow you blueberries in a container.
The first time I planted blueberries, I used pine sawdust to kill the weeds, then used the sawdust for mulch. It worked OK, but I think the sawdust tied up a lot of nitrogen in the soil as it broke down, which slowed plant growth.
When I extended my blueberry patch, I first smothered the grass in a 10’x24′ plot with black plastic during the growing season. In the fall, I tilled in a generous amount of leaves and black peat by-product from earthworm casting production.
Be Careful with Chemicals
Avoid large amounts of sulfur and chemical fertilizers, which disrupt soil health.
If you do add sulfur in quantity to lower pH, wait at least three months for it to break down before planting. (For instance, add sulfur in fall for planting in spring.)
Where to Plant Blueberry Bushes
As noted above, blueberry plants prefer slightly acidic soil rich in organic matter. They need full sun for best fruit production, but will tolerate some afternoon shade.
Avoid planting blueberries in ground that tends to have standing water or ground that dries out too quickly. Think “edge of forest”, not bog. If standing water is an issue, try raised beds.
Which Blueberry Variety is Right for Your Area?
Different blueberry varieties can be grown from Texas to Canada. Check with your local Cooperative Extension office, or ask neighbors who have had success in growing blueberries.
You can also check your favorite local garden center or online nursery for suggested blueberry varieties. Try to plant at least two different varieties so they can cross pollinate.
Basic blueberry types include:
- Lowbush Blueberry – Vaccinium anugustifolium – Cold tolerant, less productive than high bush blueberry varieties, can be used as an edible ground cover or food forest planting
- Northern Highbush Blueberry – Vaccinium corymbosum – For zones 4-7 (specific highbush blueberry varieties will tolerate colder temps, such as those I’m growing in zone 3). Grows 5-6’ tall.
- Southern Highbush Blueberry – Vaccinium corymbosum hybrids – For zones 7-10. Plants require little chilling, but are otherwise similar to their northern cousins.
- Rabbiteye Blueberry – Vaccinium ashei – Best for southern growers. For zones 7-8. Cold tolerant to around zero F. This blueberry variety can grow up to 20 feet if left unpruned, but best trimmed to manageable picking height.
- Saskatoon – Amelanchier alnifolia – Not a true blueberry, but extremely cold tolerant. Can be grown in the northern United States and Southern Canada. Does not require acidic soil.
Saskatoons are also known as serviceberry, shadbush and juneberry. Fruit flavor is somewhat bland, seeds are larger than blueberry seeds and have a mild almond flavor.
Plant Spacing
When growing blueberries, allow 6 to 8 feet between rows.
Space blueberry plants:
- 4 feet to 6 feet apart for highbush blueberries
- 24 inches to four feet apart for low bush blueberries
- 1 to 5 feet for saskatoon plants
Planting Blueberry Bushes
Plant container grown blueberry plants in your garden at the same depth they were growing in the pot. The same rule applies for bare root plants.
To remove a blueberry bush from its container, place your hand around the base of the blueberry plant with your palm facing towards the soil to support the root ball. Gently invert the pot to dump the blueberry bush out.
Check for roots that circled around inside the pot, and gently loosen and spread them out before you set your blueberry bush into the planting hole.
If planting a bareroot blueberry plant, gently spread the roots in the planting hole. Cover the roots of your plant and gently tamp down the soil.
Water the blueberry bush well to settle the soil around the roots, and cover soil with a layer of organic mulch.
When to Plant Blueberry Bushes
Bareroot blueberry plants should be planted in early spring, preferably while they are still dormant, to minimize transplant shock.
Container grown blueberry plants do well planted in spring, too, but can also be planted later in the season. It’s best to avoid planting in mid-summer, when high temps in the garden can stress plants. Areas with mild winters may do well planting container grown blueberries in fall.
Note for Plants Purchased via Mail
If you purchase blueberries from an online nursery, they may need to be acclimated to your area before planting.
Start with placing the containers in sheltered, shady spot outdoors, such as a porch. Keep them there for 3-4 hours the first day, bringing them inside at night. Add 1-2 hours of outside time each day, planting at the end of a week.
Avoid exposing your young blueberry plants to freezing temperatures when they have fresh baby leaves. If frost threatens after planting, use frost protection.
Locally grown container blueberries that have been sitting outside at a nursery shouldn’t need to be acclimated and can be planted directly in the garden.
Best Blueberry Mulch
Blueberries are a shallow rooted shrub and don’t compete well with grass, so they benefit from a good mulching.
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Mulch helps keep the moisture level stable, and cust down on the amount of time spent watering.
I would say the best blueberry mulch is pine needles. They help maintain the correct pH, and add nutrients to the soil.
If you can’t get pine needles, bark or wood chips over wet newspaper would be my next choice.
The Best Blueberry Fertilizer
Fertilize blueberries with an acid fertilizer like ammonium sulfate or Down to Earth Acid Mix.
Use 2 ounces of ammonium sulfate 18 inches from the plant when you see blossoms. Increase by one ounce each year, up to 4 oz per plant per year.
If you are adding extra mulch at the same time, increase the amount of fertilizer by 1/2.
How to Fertilize Blueberries the Right Way
Along with acid fertilizer, blueberry plants love earthworm castings. When the blueberries are starting to bud, I fertilize my blueberry bushes with earthworm castings.
To apply castings, I pull back the mulch at the base of the blueberry bush, and spread an inch of two of worm castings. Then I move the mulch back into place around the blueberry plant.
(More info on organic fertilizers here.)
Watering Blueberries
Once you prep the soil, fertilizer and mulch, the main thing to watch during the growing season is watering.
Blueberries need around an inch of water per week, and water is extra important when the berries are growing. Without water, the berries wither instead of ripening.
Blueberry bushes set fruit next year on this year’s growth, so you want to make sure to care for your blueberry plants well throughout the season.
Protecting Blueberry Plants from Birds and Other Animals
The first problem I ran into with blueberries is that every wild animal eats them, and not just the berries.
First the deer came to browse and then the rabbits, and the first 6 plants I put in turned into 2 inch stubs.
I fenced the next planting with 3 foot wire, but I still had problems with the deer jumping the fence, so last year I went to a 6 1/2 ft fence.
To keep the birds out, I built a frame work out of T post, chicken wire, tube steel and conduit, then ran wires to support plastic bird netting. This created safe haven for the plants to grow and berries to ripen pest free.
Having the netting elevated instead of just draped over the plants provides better protection and makes the plants easier to access for harvest and care.
When you price fencing materials they may seem expensive, but remember a blueberry planting can last 30 years if you manage it properly, so it will be worth it in the long term.
For more information on my set up, see “Blueberry Netting Tips – Protecting Blueberries from Birds (& Deer)“.
When to Pick Blueberries
Pick blueberries when they are a deep blue color. It’s okay to pick them slightly underripe and let them ripen at room temperature inside.
Avoid letting overripe blueberries sit on the plant, as they can attract Drosophila fruit flies, especially in wet weather.
Blueberries will keep for several days at room temperature, or about a week in the refrigerator. Freeze or make blueberry jam for longer storage.
Growing Blueberries in Containers, Including Overwintering Instructions
For detailed blueberry container planting information, please see “Growing Blueberries in Containers“
Excerpt from the article:
Because containers do not provide adequate insulation from the cold, be sure to protect container-grown blueberries during the winter to prevent root damage.
In mid- to late October, bury containers in the ground at a site where snow is likely to accumulate and where plants will be protected from cold winter winds.
Mulch the soil surface with four to eight inches of straw in mid-November or cover the bushes with burlap. Prevent rabbit damage by placing chicken wire fencing or hardware cloth around the bushes.
During early to mid-spring, remove containers from the ground and place them in full sun. Alternatively, containers can be left buried in the soil as long as the containers have proper drainage holes and the site where the containers are buried is well drained and exposed to full sun.
How to Plant Blueberries in Pots
How to Prune Blueberries
Here’s a good post from Oregon State University Extension on proper pruning techniques for blueberries, “Prune blueberries yearly for more fruit“, which includes the following steps:
“Remove the low growth that would touch the ground when loaded with fruit. Cut out short, soft shoots that develop from the base of the plant late in the season.
Prune off canes and twigs damaged by winter injury, mechanical causes, diseases or insects. Cut out the unproductive canes: those that haven’t produced much new growth on one-year-old canes, which have buds and are dull in color.
If you have been pruning every year, it is best to remove the two oldest (most unproductive) canes each winter.
Prune to let light down into the plant center.
If your plants tend to overbear, with numerous small fruits rather than larger ones, thin the fruit buds by clipping back some of the small shoots carrying a heavy load of flower buds. Blueberry flower buds are near the tips of the past season’s growth and are large and plump, compared to the small scale-like “leaf” buds.”
How to Transplant Mature Blueberry Plants
Yes, you can transplant mature blueberry bushes.
It’s best done in late winter or early spring. “How to Transplant a Mature Blueberry Bush” is a pretty good guide, although I would try to give the sulfur a longer rest period before planting.
How to Clone Blueberries from Mature Plants
See “How to Graft or Clone Blueberries” for instructions on cloning your own blueberry plants.
This post is by Laurie Neverman’s brother, Richard Poplawski. Since his service in the Marines, Rich has been a mechanic, fabricator and “fix just about anything” guy for over 20 years.
He lives in northwest Wisconsin and maintains a large orchard and perennial plantings, as well as a vegetable garden. He loves spending time with his grandkids, introducing them to gardening or getting in some fishing with “Papa Rich”.
His posts on the site include:
- How to Grow the Best Raspberries You’ve Ever Tasted
- Car Won’t Start in the Cold? check Out these Troubleshooting Tips
- 5 Things You Need to Know Before You Buy a Wood Burning Stove
First published in 2012, last updated in 2020.
Randi Bagley-Goodwin says
Sorry, Randi
I just saw your post, I think you are saying about
https://www.centuryfarmorchards.com/
They Have 200 year old trees, apple,pears,figs.
Not sure where to put this, it is not mine, someone gave it to me.
Easy Blueberry Dumplings Recipe
Sauce
4 cups blueberries (or other berry) fresh or frozen
2 tsp corn starch (for frozen berries)
½ cup water
3 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp lemon juice
Dumplings
2 cups flour or gluten-free flour blend (I used 2/3 cup brown rice flour, 2/3 cup sorghum flour, 2/3 cup arrowroot flour, and 1 tsp ground chia seed)
4 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
¼ cup butter
1 Tbsp maple syrup
¾ cup milk (minus a tbsp.)
My blueberries are loaded this year.
Crabapple-I was wondering which nursery you were referencing in a previous comment, the one with the enormous apple tree variety? I’m in Georgia, and would probably fare well with the varieties they carry.
Thanks in advance!
Randi
Excellent article I am starting blueberry farming soon zimbabwe and found this article really helpful
Should I pluck the flowering bud of the Blueberry Plant in the first year or when I plant the bush or do not pluck?
It would probably be best to remove blossoms the first year so that the plant can put energy into root growth.
I am so curious about how shrub blueberries can crossbreeding on which base plants
Breeding your own blueberry varieties is outside the scope of most home growers. The article “Building a better blueberry: A Spartan breeder perfects one of Michigan’s finest fruits” talks about what goes into breeding new varieties.
My daughter will be planting a number of taller bushes this spring in a raised bed (yet to be built). Existing soils seems to be too damp this winter, hence the reason for the raised bed. How deep should the raised bed be? Thanks
If you can manage a foot deep, that should keep the roots from getting waterlogged if moisture is an issue.
im starting a new project in zimbabwe for blue berries. help with guisw lines. the climate soil and water available
I don’t know that blueberries would do well in Zimbawe, but you may be able to grow the more southern varieties.
My farm is surrounded by fagus and hornbeam forest. Instead of peat moss, can I use forest floor for organic matter enrichment. The soil analysis says that there is 3-4% organic matter at the top soil. Do I still need soil enrichment. If yes, what kind of analyses I should have made. Ph , C/N. What else? What should C/N must be?
As long as your pH is right and you have good levels of organic matter, your blueberries should be okay. It wouldn’t hurt to do an NPK check, and add some worm castings or compost, too.
Purchased 12 blueberry rooted plants from a farm in NJ last early summer. Planted them immediately into large pots and directly into my garden. Within a week to 10 days after planting them the leaves on most of the developed spots which looked similar to a leaf fungus. A representative of the NJ blueberry farm told me the spots were caused by the sun’s rays being magnified by water droplets on the leaves and that was of no concern. Yea no concern! Within two weeks later all the leaves on most of the bushes became spotted and eventually turned brown and fell off. This went on until the entire bush was leafless and showed no evidence of new growth. About three of the plants which were isolated from the infected plants showed some evidence of positive now growth.
So out of 12 plants from the NJ farm sort of three survived. However two plants purchased from a local nursery near Baltimore never developed any leaf spots and appear to doing well.
I tried to identify the cause and prevention of the leaf spots on the internet. It appears to be some type of leaf fungus which is common to most fruit plants and trees. The treatment is an anti-fungicide.
Has anyone on this site had a similar experience? If so what did you do to successfully control or eliminate the problem?
Is there any truth to the story from the NJ farm that the spots were caused by water spots magnifying the sun’s rays i.e. the leaf got sunburned?
I call BS on the sunburn theory. If that was the case, they all would have been burned.
Another option you might try as an alternative to fungicides is foliar feeding aerated compost tea or Effective Micro-organisms to populate the leaf surfaces with good microbes so the fungus has less room to grow. You could also try working some Endomycorrhizal fungi spores into the soil around your plants as another way to bump up their defenses.
Can u suggest something I am an apple farmer in india I am thinking to plant blueberries in some portion of my farm are blueberries more profitable than apple should I switch to blueberries or stay with apple plants
You’d have to do a local market analysis of fruit pricing in your area, comparing not just what you can sell the fruit for, but the labor that will go into caring for the plantings and picking, as well as any other inputs. Blueberries will be ready to harvest before apples, but only do well in the correct soil conditions. They are also more labor intensive for picking (because the berries are smaller than apples, and will need picking over time instead of all at one time).
I am new to blueberries and I am having trouble with them. Last year the leaves were yellowish and the plants are not growing much. I killed one plant by using fertilizer .
What am I doing wrong?
I also have 2 plants that are supposed to be pink berries and they are harder than rocks. Am I doing something wrong with them as well?
Without seeing your plants, soil and conditions, it’s pretty much impossible to pin point the problem long distance. As for the pink berries, I haven’t grown them, but that doesn’t sounds right. Are you sure they were fully ripe when you picked them?
Some things to check with your blueberry plants:
Soil pH – get a soil tester or soil test kit. If your soil is alkaline, blueberries will struggle.
Moisture levels – Blueberries need adequate moisture, but can’t tolerate standing water. Soil should be neither too wet or too dry.
Adequate fertilizer, but not too much – look for a slow release blueberry fertilizer like the one listed in the post, and/or pull back mulch and gently top dress with compost or composted manure each spring. Too much nitrogen (fresh manure or a high nitrogen fertilizer) will burn plants. Blueberries do need plenty of nutrients to thrive, so foliar feeding in spring and early summer with something like fish emulsion or compost tea is helpful.
our blueberry plants are still small. they are 2 years old and we are just this year mulching really good around them…
there are lots of what my grandmother calls “suckers” around our plants. are these what you are calling canes in the article? do we need to remove some or all of them? thank you.
You’re talking about new growth coming directly from the ground, right? These are how your bushes will spread, so no need to remove, unless they are crowded or crossing.
Yes, the first blueberries I got were 20 sucker of one variety of rabbiteye.
Then I got 6 sucker from a man who had 20 year old low bush southern blue berries.
All these were free, because fruit growing persons seem to want you to join their club.
I bought a 1 gallon plant from Walmart which is earlier, pick in May here, but dose not sucker, so I will root cutting.
I got 50 sucker of 3 varieties last Spring & lost 1/3 or 16 plant because of poor root systems(&2.00 ea.).
I should have got them in the Fall-Winter, more rain so they may have made it.
The gentleman has 5 more varieties, so I going to get them this Fall.
The hope is to have ripe berries from last of May to first week in August.
Yes, we have 5.0-5.5 sandy loam soil here & blueberries love it, we have a wild low bush blue berry too.
None of my bushes are taller the 5′ 6″, so easy to pick.
I need to get apple next, there is a Southern nursery with 400 varieties for the lower state & I can have fresh apple last of June till first of November & figs almost as long.
Wish I could send you some of my heat in you chilly Spring.
We had 18 degrees & snow on the 7 of Jan. & 80 degrees on the 12 of Jan.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
I agree with most of what you say, mainly because I found it to be true in my experience & most articles also agree. The spacing may be fine for small orchards, but I plant my 6 variety 9′-15′ feet apart.
First, 5 variety have sucker, I transplant some & let some grow, one day the row will be filled in.
Second, I mulch with cardboard boxes & the space is weed free.
Here in South Carolina we can get ripe blue berries from the last of May until first of August with the right spread of variety.
Do you by chance have rabbiteye types? Those look like they can easily grow much larger. Also, with a longer growing season than we have here in Wisconsin, I’d suspect that whatever you grow, if it’s happy it could grow quite large.
Great article and answers. Thank you.
We have a long front to our property (225 ft) and currently have horrible thorny hedges, which we would like to replace with blueberry bushes. We live in Westchester County, NY (Zone 6). We would ultimately like 4-6′ tall bushes to provide a good (but certainly not complete) screening, and are ok waiting 2-3 years for the bushes to achieve this. From the research I’ve done, it seems that we would need about 90 2- or 3-year old northern highbushes.
Two questions:
1. Do you think we will be able to achieve “good” screening in a couple of years?
2. Because this is along our front, we cannot build fences to keep out the animals (deer aren’t a problem, but we have rabbits, squirrels, and racoons). We can place nets directly on a portion of the bushes to protect the fruit. Do you think 2- or 3-year old bushes will thrive “in the open”?
Thanks again.
It depends. If your bushes grow well, you should be able to use them as a living screen. Many critters like to snack on bushes, so it can be challenging to get them growing without protection. They also need the right soil, and the right amount of moisture at the right time. I’d talk to a local nursery or cooperative extension office to see which varieties they would suggest as most likely to thrive in your area.
I have a chipmunk problem. They are burrowing close to my blueberry bushes and the ground surrounding the bushes is spongy due to the tunnels. They are eating the blueberries and I suspect they may be eating the roots as well because they don’t seem to be doing well. I have been having this problem for years and have tried traps and smoke bombs with little success. If you have any tips on how to get rid of them, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
John
Cats or snakes? Our cats are good mousers, and run a regular ruite around the gardens, keeping down the rodent population. Mid-sized snakes are good, too, because they can follow the rodents right down their holes. In our area, we get fox snakes, which are not poisonous. Not sure what might be native to your area, so that might be tougher to work out. If you have habitat (rocks, cover), odds are that snakes will move in. last summer we had a family of ground squirrels move in underneath one of our concrete patios. The cats got two babies, and one morning I saw a snake exit the area near the hole to go hide in my nearby flower bed. Didn’t spot another ground squirrel from that hole.
Blueberries like a lot of nitrogen when they are setting new grown (which produces fruit the following year), so stuffing fairly fresh poop down the holes may do double duty in prompting the chipmunks to relocate and feeding the berries. Some sort of predator – dog or cat – would probably work best. Just don’t put poop that is too fresh too close to the plants, as it may burn them.
Chipmunks are notoriously hard to get rid of, but these are the strategies I would use, and they have kept our ground squirrels in check.
This is a helpful, and very thorough article. However adding sulfur in the fall to lower the soil pH is not going to be very effective because it is a biological reaction, and needs to be applied when it is warmer or will soon be warming up for the bacteria in the soil to convert it to sulfuric acid. If you need to drastically adjust the pH, you’ll want to add sulfur a year before planting, if not two (so you can apply it one year, retest the soil to see how much you still need to adjust, and then add more the next year). You could also add it in the spring, it would work throughout the summer, and then plant your bushes in the late fall. You can add it around existing bushes without hurting them, but in small quantities. It’s just more difficult because it works best when incorporated into the soil. If you’re only planting a couple, it might be best to start them in containers and transplant them after a year or two of preparing the soil.
Thank you, good to note.
Oh yeah, you will need more probably… Make sure you measure the height of plants before and after with pics, so you can prove it to yourself and friends that you weren’t dreaming!!!
Yup!
Hi Laurie… You’re welcome.. Try it out… Just my opinion, but I would put the concentrate in a gallon glass jar, not a plastic milk jug because (Unless you have a massive farm), you will probably have plenty left over by winter… (I have at least 7/10ths of the concentrate left)
Also, I wouldn’t keep the leftover for next year, it will smell bad by the end of the year
I used it as recommended in MT this year, and have more parsley, oregano, thyme, spearmint, basil and chives than I can properly store in a freezer… The tomatoes I chose were Organic, and did produce hundreds, but ripened way too fast, as they were Early Girls and San Marzano’s…
I don’t know the rule about blueberries yet, but will bookmark and update when I can… Bottom line, you never know until you try it… I just love that I don’t need any chemicals, period
I have acres of “stuff” growing around here, so I should be able to put a full batch to good use. We put in 70+ trees and shrubs this year in addition to the dozens that were already planted, plus the annual gardens (9 beds). Sometimes I think I should cut back a little, but them I start cooking for two teenage boys. I do hope to be able to integrate more perennial crops over time so that I can cut back on the annuals a little – or maybe we’ll plant even more and sell the excess. One day at a time and I’ll see how it all goes.