How to Make a Blueberry Bush Thrive

Fresh blueberries from your own plants can provide your family with a recurring supply of fruits for eating raw or baking throughout the growing season. As with many fruit producing plants, the way to make a blueberry bush thrive is with sufficient pruning and fertilizing. Once you have started to maintain your plants for optimum growth and fruit production, turn the process into an annual routine for year after year of harvests.

Cultivator
10-10-10 fertilizer granules
Pine mulch
Hand pruners

Instructions

- 1
  Use a cultivator in spring when buds appear around the base of your plant to pull away an existing mulch or debris that is covering the soil. Loosen the upper inch of soil for 15 to 18 inches around your blueberries' base.
- 2
  Spread 1 oz. fertilizer granules over the loose soil for every year in age your blueberry plant is. Mix the granules with the soil using the cultivator. Add 2- to 3-inches-deep layer of pine mulch over the loose soil.
- 3
  Repeat pulling away mulch, spreading fertilizer granules and recovering with mulch six weeks later. For plants six years or older, don't use more than 6 oz. granules each time. Repeat this process one to three times every year in spring, to keep the blueberry plants fed.
- 4
  Prune your blueberry plants from January to early March when the plant is dormant. Clip away growth that droops to the ground when berries are full, damaged or misshapen branches, short stems that are pushing up from the ground near the base of your plant and old branches that aren't producing many berries. Cut by tracing each branch back to where it forks away from a healthy portion of the plant. Make the cut parallel to the healthy branch and ½ inch out from it.

When Are Wild Blueberries Ripe?

Jersey Blueberry Bushes

Growing Blueberries